Being Human
by Feeney
Summary: A werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost attempt to live peaceful, normal lives among humans - but being human is way harder than it looks. A Being Human (TV) AU featuring Korra the werewolf, Mako the vampire, Bolin the ghost, and Asami the human that appears at their doorstep. Some plot elements will be similar to the TV series, but not all.
1. Day To Day

_**CHAPTER ONE - Day To Day**_

* * *

The doorbell rang. Korra winced.

"Bolin, no!" She shouted from the bathroom, desperately trying to hasten the toilet paper process. "Don't do it!"

Mako was away at work. There was no one else but her around to stop Bolin. Korra could practically hear the whoooosh of air as he sped down the hall.

"Bolin!"

Too late. Korra heard the front door creak open. He must have ended up teleporting, one of his new favorite ghosty things to do. Korra stood up quickly and began fumbling with her jeans. She staggered out into the hall with her belt still undone, just in time to hear Bolin swing the door open and his chirping voice greet the visitor. Or at least, try to.

"Hi there!" Bolin smiled brightly. "Lovely weather we're having!"

The delivery guy looked around, confused, at the empty house in front of him.

"Hello? Anyone there?" he wondered, holding a package that likely contained the textbooks Korra had ordered online. He hesitated, unsure if it was okay to just walk into a house whose door apparently could open all by itself. Bolin didn't seem to put off by any of this in the slightest.

"I always had a question for you delivery folks," Bolin said, glancing over his shoulder at the street. He knew very well that regular humans couldn't see or hear him, but that never stopped him before. "How come your little brown trucks don't have doors? Like, aren't you scared you might fall out? I know you guys are in and out delivering packages all the time, but that just seems unsafe."

Of course, the delivery guy didn't answer.

"Um, excuse me, I need a signature? I can't just leave the package here alone. Is anyone home?"

"Yeah, sorry! Come on in!" Korra leapt down the stairs and swatted at Bolin until he moved away. She didn't want the delivery guy accidentally walking through him. The chill of walking through a spirit unknowingly was very disorienting, and she didn't want to have to explain that and their magical opening door.

The delivery guy furrowed his brow because, obviously, he didn't see what Korra was waving at.

"Uh, mosquito," she said sheepishly. "Here, I'll sign."

"How did your door open by itself?" he asked, holding out the signature pad.

"Wind?" Korra suggested lamely, scribbling a vague 'K' and a squiggly line on his pad. "Okay, see ya!"

When she turned around with her box, Korra found Bolin breathing right over her shoulder, eyes wide and distinctly puppy-dog featured.

"Korra, can you pleeease ask him?"

"No," she hissed.

"What was that?" the delivery guy asked, looking back at her. "Did you say something?"

"I...said...nooo...now I have to studyyy…" Korra stammered, holding up the box of books.

"Oh." He smiled. "Sorry about that. Where do you go to school?"

"Avatar University." She tried to discreetly inch her way over to the door to shut it. Delivery Guy needed to go away so she could yell at Bolin for answering the door yet again. Mako was going to be pissed when he heard about this.

"Wow, good school!"

"Ask him for me?" Bolin pleaded. "Please, just ask him and I won't open the door again for a whole week! I promise!"

Korra scowled. He shouldn't be opening the door at all, but she would take what she could get. Bolin didn't have a whole lot to do now that he was dead, so he had plenty of time to think of really dumb questions that didn't need answering.

With a heavy sigh, she asked, "Hey, I always wondered, don't you guys feel unsafe without a door on those trucks of yours?"

The delivery guy laughed. "We get that a lot. There is a door, we just roll it back when we're on the streets. If we're on faster roads or highways not actively making deliveries, that's when we close them. Want to see?"

She very much did not, but Bolin was bouncing up and down excitedly. "Yes! Yes! Yes, we do!"

"Yeah, I guess," Korra replied, in a completely disinterested tone that the neither Bolin nor the delivery guy seemed to notice. She followed him to the truck parked across the street, but unfortunately Bolin was only able to go about the length of the front yard without touching the sidewalk. He'd never made it further than that yet, although a few months ago he could only take a few steps out the door. It was one of the many ghosty-things Bolin was working on.

He'd see enough from where he stood, though. The delivery guy flipped a latch and sure enough, a thin door rolled out of the side of the truck, concealing the drivers side.

"Cool, huh?" He winked in a way that made her uneasy.

"Awesome!" Bolin gushed.

"Yeah," Korra shrugged as casually as she could. This whole thing really needed to end now. "Thanks. Bye."

"My name is Noatak," he said, holding out his hand. Korra just stared at it. Oh boy.

"Hah! He's so into you," Bolin snickered from his perch in the yard. "Just shake his hand! Can't hurt!"

Her mouth narrowed into a thin line. It was hard, trying to glare at someone you couldn't make direct eye contact with in front of other people.

"C'mon, I wish I could shake a hand," Bolin said. "I miss that. Let me live vicariously through you."

Korra sighed again, knowing full well what he was trying to do - pull the sad invisible ghost card. Again. She shook it, but chose not to introduce herself. She really, really wanted to yell at Bolin now and this guy was holding it up.

"And your name is Korra," Noatak said. At her alarmed expression, he laughed. "I remember the name on the box. This isn't the first thing I've delivered for you, actually."

"This is the first time I'm meeting you."

"Yeah, someone else signed for the others. Tall guy, kind of pale, black hair? Wore a red scarf for some reason, even though it's still technically summer."

"Oh, yeah. That's Mako."

Noatak looked back up at the house. Korra and Bolin even turned around to see what he was looking for, but saw nothing.

"Your boyfriend around now?"

That was a strange question to ask, and it made her uncomfortable on multiple levels. Korra raised an eyebrow, deciding that if he didn't leave now, she was going to make him leave.

"He's not my boyfriend," Korra said, dodging the question of Mako's whereabouts.

"You don't wanna open that can of worms, buddy," Bolin joked unhelpfully. She discreetly gave him the finger behind her back, so Noatak wouldn't see.

"Oh, sorry, I just thought...?"

"Don't you have other things to deliver?" Korra asked impatiently, pointedly eyeing up his truck. He looked like he wanted to ask something else, but they were so done.

He grinned nervously at her bluntness. "Right, right. Well, I'll see you around. Good luck at school."

"Thanks." She turned and headed back to the house, making sure to swipe at Bolin so he followed. Korra didn't even bother to watch Noatak get in his truck and drive away.

Inside, she dropped the box of textbooks onto the couch.

"Make your head corporeal," Korra ordered.

"Why?"

"Just do it."

He did. Korra couldn't tell just by looking if it was really solid, but when she smacked him upside the head, her hand connected and he stumbled forward.

" Ow , hey!"

"You can't even feel that," Korra reminded him.

"I know, I know, it's just a reflex." He shrugged. "But then why bother smacking me at all?"

"Because I get to feel it, and you deserve it," she said angrily. When Korra took another swing, this time a little more light-heartedly, her hand went right through him. He just laughed.

"You know, that guy was nice!" He flopped onto the couch and started to rip open her package. "You were kind of rude. Didn't you think he was handsome?"

"He was like, forty-something!" Korra sniffed. "And weird! Don't try to change the subject! You have to stop answering the door, Bolin! As if we didn't have enough to worry about with all the haunting rumors and people starting to - "

"They're not rumors," he pointed out, withdrawing one of her textbooks. "The house is haunted. By me."

Korra frowned. She hated when he said that. Despite it being true that Bolin was a ghost and he was inhabiting the house, he wasn't haunting it. If anything, she thought he brought more life to it than Mako and Korra put together.

"We just want to - "

"Ooooh, anatomy . Hahaha. A wiener."

"Mako and I just - "

"I know, you're trying to help me," he said, without looking up. "I'm trapped in this house and you two don't want me to be alone forever so you guys are stuck here too."

"Bolin. Come on."

"Which means you have to make the rent every month, keep up appearances with the neighbors, and be sure not to freak everyone out and get evicted," he said bitterly. "Meanwhile, all I can do is stop being a creepy ghost opening and closing windows and doors all the time, trying to talk to people on the streets that can't see or hear me. And I can't even do that ."

Her heart broke. Of all the people in all the world Bolin was probably the least deserving to become a ghost. Korra had never met anyone so bubbly, happy, hopeful, and alive, even in death. Just over a year ago he was the biggest nerd on campus, but in a way that made somehow made him more popular. He was the class clown, girls thought he was cute, guys thought he was funny, and he had plenty of geeky little friends. He was a motormouth, and there was little in the world that could shut him up.

To not have anyone see, hear, or even touch him was almost unimaginable. Korra wondered, not for the first time, how he managed not to go completely insane. She tried, and his brother tried, but they knew it was killing him all over again to be so lonely. And it was killing them that there was nothing they could do. Bolin was trapped on this plane of existence, dead to everyone except two people, and unable to go more than fifteen feet outside of the house he'd been murdered in.

But all three of three of them had problems. Korra sat next to him gently, knowing that she wouldn't be able to put her arm around his large shoulders like she wanted. Not unless he let her. Instead, she rested it on the couch behind him.

"Hey. We love you. You know that."

He shut her anatomy book. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

She could feel the weight of his back press against the couch. Korra smiled. He was letting her hug him, so she did. She only wished he could have felt it.

"You have enough to worry about," Bolin said guiltily. "It's your time of the month tonight, isn't it?"

Korra couldn't help but pull out their old joke.

"Which one?"

He laughed, as he always did. "The one with the howling."

"Which one?"

Bolin smirked. "Seriously. You feel okay? It's starting to get a little late."

She nodded grimly. The full moon usually hit around early afternoon, contrary to popular belief. That was when her milder symptoms started. A little moodiness, a little bit more of a temper, maybe a certain impatience with chatty delivery guys. Fortunately, the real symptoms didn't start until it got dark. Once the sun was completely set, it was showtime.

"I'm still fine right now, though."

Suddenly they heard the clinking sound of metal scratching against the door knob, and the muttered cursing of someone whose keys all looked the same. This happened to Mako every evening.

"I told you to use those color-coded key labels Korra ordered!" Bolin shouted from the couch. Neither of them made any effort to get up and open the door for him. Served him right, Mr. Too-Cool-To-Label-His-Keys.

After several more moments of failed key-testing, he finally got the door open and stomped in, looking thoroughly annoyed.

"Key labels are for dorks," Mako grumbled, before they could say anything.

"At least dorks can get into their own houses," Korra quipped.

"How was work?" Bolin asked, elbowing me. Obviously he didn't want her blabbing about him answering the door. Mako didn't look like he was in the greatest mood, and they probably shouldn't have been making him more cranky. He got even more annoyed than Korra did when his brother did dumb stuff like that. "And why'd you go in this morning? You usually do the night shift."

"I went in this morning to empty my locker and collect my last paycheck," Mako grumbled again. "Got fired this weekend. Spent the day looking for a new job."

They stared at him as he pulled off his boots to set them neatly on the shoe rack in the corner, kicking Korra's haphazardly tossed sneakers to the side so he didn't trip on them. He then unraveled his beloved red scarf and hung it on the hook by the door, revealing the dark, angry scar on his neck.

"What do you mean you got fired?! " Korra demanded. Mako moved her box of books to the coffee table so he could tiredly drop onto the couch next to them.

"I've been feeling like I didn't fit in there for a while," he admitted. Bolin and Korra shared a look. Mako was always weirdly quiet about his job, which he'd held down for over eight months. It was almost like he was embarrassed to work at the Avatar University Hospital Center. His night shift security job was actually a pretty sweet gig. Mostly he just roamed the empty hallways aimlessly. The life of a hospital guard offered minimal human contact and a decent night shift differential, which was always good for a vampire.

Mako had been clean almost a year. He had not bitten a single human in all that time, getting his sustenance primarily from the blood of animals he hunted. But despite his impressive vampire track record, it was still a constant struggle for him. Human blood would always be his drug, it was in the vampire's nature no matter what his morals. That was why his job had been perfect.

And why it made no sense that he'd been fired.

"Did that guy Zaheer do something?" Korra asked. What little they did know about his job was mostly complaints about his dickhead coworker. Mako spoke more about him being a jerk than anything else at work. Apparently he was a preachy hippie that pushed his politics on anyone that stood still long enough to hear.

"Zaheer...was a part of it," he confirmed, leaning back on the couch and sighing. "But I don't work there anymore, long story short."

Korra made a face. His long work stories were always short.

"What about your other work friends you talked about? Ghazan? And P'Li, was it?"

He shrugged. "No huge loss."

"Well...as long as you're okay…" Bolin trailed off.

He scowled. "I'm not okay. Rent is due - overdue, actually. We can try and charm a few more weeks out of Raiko, but he's not gonna let us keep doing this. Especially if our lease is up next month. We won't be able to renew, at this rate."

They sat quietly, processing the troubling realization. It was a bit of an extravagant house for people who were just barely in their twenties to be renting. Especially if one was still splitting time between college and work, the other just lost a shitty job, and the third technically didn't exist. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a remodelled kitchen and living room, and large unfinished basement. It was a home for an established family, parents with two kids and a dog. Normal humans with normal lives.

Not them.

Mr. Raiko, their landlord, was pretty decent. He was elderly and living in a small condo with his wife now that his kids had grown up and started their own families. Still, he couldn't be expected to let us skimp on the rent, it was already ridiculously discounted due to the attack and murder that had occurred on the premises last summer.

Technically, they owed our relatively cheap rent to Bolin and Mako being killed by vampires in their living room. That was why they couldn't leave, even if they couldn't make rent. Mako was turned, an undead vampire that could move about freely, but Bolin was killed completely. As a ghost, he was trapped on the property for whatever reason. And as long as he was tethered here, they could not let ourselves get evicted.

"I've been thinking about how we could possibly make rent..." Korra said slowly. The boys looked at her curiously and she cringed. They were not going to like this, and even she thought it was a fairly awful idea, especially after what Bolin had pulled earlier. They couldn't ignore the fact that Mako was right, though - unless something changed, this thing they had wouldn't last. "Look, Mako, you'll find another job eventually, but even if you do, we were barely making a living as it is. The only reason we've lasted this long is because we've been scraping together the crumbs from Bolin's wrongful death lawsuit with the city!"

"Which, I gotta say, really weird to be living off my own death money," Bolin interjected.

"I'll get two jobs," Mako said gruffly. "Three, if I have to."

"In this economy you'll be lucky to get one," Korra pointed out. And despite not needing sleep, vampires still needed to rest. Mako still got stressed out and emotional when he was overwhelmed, and that was no good for anyone. But he only really slept when he had nothing else to do, and Bolin never slept at all. It wasn't really a requirement for vampires, and a complete impossibility for ghosts. Which led her to her point. "I've actually been speaking to Raiko... Look, we have three bedrooms and only two people that need an actual bed. One, really."

"What are you saying?" Mako's eyes narrowed.

"I'm saying, well, you would keep your bedroom the same…" Korra slowly looked at Bolin. "But I think I should move out of the master bedroom into Bolin's room. We could spruce up the basement for you."

He opened his mouth to protest, just like she knew he would. She was prepared for it.

"Don't worry, we'll stick all your little toys and dolls - "

" Models and action figures! "

" - into all those big storage shelves. There's way more room for all your stuff down there, anyway. All that space is just wasted. Bolin can have his own little haunted apartment down there!"

He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "That does sound like a good idea. The basement is even bigger than the master, and it's not like I can feel how warm and stuffy it gets down there because of all our soundproofing. I'd have to throw a decorative covering over the cage, but with a little clever lighting and a nice rug…"

Mako raised an eyebrow. "But why? "

Korra took a deep breath.

"So...we could get another roommate."

The parade of expressions on their faces was almost funny, starting with confusion, melting into amusement as if she were joking, and finally twisting into horror when they realized she was dead serious.

"What?!" they both yelped.

"No way!" Mako cried. "I am a vampire. My brother is a ghost. You are a werewolf. Are you kidding me!? You want a human living with us!?"

"I'm only a werewolf once a month," Korra reasoned. "And I know you won't try to hurt anyone, Mako, you've been so great. And Bolin will just... behave. "

"It's not going to be that easy!"

He was right. In so many ways, Korra knew it was stupid. When she transformed, they always secured her pretty well in the basement, but there was no guarantee a human roommate would be safe. And she knew introducing a human to the household would just pile more temptation on top of Mako's daily struggle not to fall off the wagon. Worst of all, it was cruel to ask Bolin to stay hidden in the one place he was allowed to exist, especially since he was just learning all his new ghosty tricks like teleporting and touching stuff. The house was supposed to be their haven. A place where they kept their demons to ourselves.

"But what other choice do we have?" Korra demanded. "We just don't have the money to stay in this house without another roommate. At least not until I graduate and get a job that pays better."

"You do have another choice," Bolin suggested, his voice hollow.

Mako and Korra rounded on him immediately.

"Shut up, Bolin," Mako said angrily. "We're not leaving you."

"Don't you dare think that again," Korra agreed.

"I'm just saying - "

"No," she said firmly. "Guys, come on. We'll make it work. We have to. Just until May. It's temporary, and we'll kick them out after I graduate. Okay? Nine months. We can do it. We've come this far already, right?"

It was hard to believe that a whole year had passed since they had moved in. A whole year since two brothers were chased by a gang of vampires into this empty house. A whole year since they cursed one with the life of a vampire and turned the other into a violently murdered corpse. A whole freaking year since the newly-turned vampire ran into his ex-girlfriend, found out she had broken up with him because she was a werewolf, and invited her broke college ass to live with him and the ghost of his brother.

It was a long story. A very, very long story that was awkward on so many levels. But they'd already overcome so much, why wouldn't they be able to handle living with a human?

"We are what we are, and we can't help that," Korra continued. "But we're still here. We're still okay. As far as the outside world is concerned, we are human. We just need to be... extra human now."

"Nine months..." Bolin said uneasily.

"Nine months."

Mako took a deep breath, meeting both their eyes.

"Okay. Maybe...there's a slim possibility we could pull it off."

Korra started to smile. "We put them up in her big master bedroom. That way, we can charge them a larger portion of the rent. And they'll have their own attached bath, so maybe we won't even need to see them all that much. We'll try to find that quiet stay-in-room type, you know? Or one of those always-out-the-house people with busy social lives. Although we should enforce a strict rule about no guests. One human will be enough to deal with."

Mako was nodding slowly.

"Ooooh, I'll write the listing!" Bolin gushed. "This'll be fun! I'll have to take pictures! Gimme your phone, Mako - "

He snatched his brother's phone excitedly and opened up the camera, immediately holding it out and looking for good angles. Mako repressed a grin and grabbed it back.

"All right, we'll give it a shot. But we can do all this later. Korra, it's your time of the month. The sun goes down in an hour."

She nodded, acknowledging the goosebumps on her arm. It wasn't just because of this whole roommate thing. Soon, she would feel her system flooding with whatever the hormones and chemicals were that caused her metamorphosis. Her breathing would get faster, her heart would pound harder, and she would break out in a cold sweat.

"I'm still okay," Korra said, heading to the kitchen. "I should have some dinner, though. You know how I get if I wolf out on an empty stomach."

She always tried to keep it light, as if she was used to it all by now. Like it was just a minor inconvenience. The boys knew better.

They followed her and watched as she stuck her head in the fridge, packed full of food. There were also a few blood bags that Mako had scored after stealing from the blood bank's rejection bin. Blood-transmitted diseases didn't affect vampires, so whenever he got the chance, he swiped what was screened as unusable. It tasted awful, he told them, but it still felt a little better than raccoon or goose blood. Those stayed in the drawer at the bottom of the fridge, far from Korra's dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

She pulled out an entire package of mozzarella string cheese and a jar of tomato sauce. From the freezer, she removed a frozen sausage lasagna and threw it in the microwave.

"Raiko was totally okay with the idea of us getting a roommate, as long as it was just one person without children," she said, dunking a stick of cheese into the sauce and chomping it in two bites. She immediately started to open another one.

"No arguments here. Kids are awful," Mako said, sitting down across the table from her. Bolin hopped up onto his usual place on the countertop.

He snorted as Korra started on her third string cheese. It had been a whole two hours since she'd snagged a couple burritos and an ice cream sundae on the way home from work. She was starving.

"And that's just on other reason we broke up. What kind of jerk thinks kids are awful?"

"Bro, you're a monster," Bolin agreed.

" You're practically a kid, Bo." Mako rolled his eyes. "A ghost trying to learn how to hold things, dropping and breaking everyone's stuff in the process?"

"I apologized like a thousand times about your goldfish!" he cried. "And the old TV, but our new TV is so much better! You should be happy!"

"You too, Korra. A werewolf eating everything, all the time, everywhere, leaving a trail of sauce and crumbs in her wake?"

"Hey, shut up, you try burning like six thousand calories a day," she purposefully flicked some of the marinara at him. It was probably even more calories than that during a full moon, when she got ravenous. "I can't help it if I need to eat all the time."

Korra topped off her fourth string cheese and returned the rest of it. Bolin moved aside so that she could reach past him into the cupboard and pull out a can of Spam and a party-size bag of Doritos. Mako looked on in disgust as she started slicing out little pieces of the meat and sandwiching them between the chips.

"And there's another reason we broke up. I get that you have to eat a lot, but you can at least eat normal things!"

"Like that raccoon you had last night?" she asked cheekily.

"I don't care what she eats, it all looks delicious to me," Bolin said. "You never eat boring stuff like a salad or like, pretzels. It's always something interesting!"

The microwave beeped.

"Finally, thank God!" Korra groaned, pulling out the lasagna. "Want some, Mako?"

"What kind of lasagna is it?" he asked. He got zero nutritional value from regular food. It just went straight through him, so to speak, but he did still have sense of taste that he liked to exercise on occasion. His food preferences were ironic, though.

"Meat."

"Pass," he said. "Remind me to get us some lasagna florentine later."

Bolin laughed. "I still can't believe you are a vegetarian vampire ."

He shrugged. "I drink blood because I have to, not because I want to. I like the taste of a good garden salad with croutons. Pita chips and hummus. Beans with seasoned rice and quinoa - "

Korra proceeded to make gagging noises into her lasagna. "Yeah, you and I never would have worked."

"This is going to a special kind of person that's gonna have to tolerate living with you two," Bolin snorted. "I wonder what she'll be like?"

"She?" Korra asked.

"Yeah, I figure it should be a girl to balance things out," he shrugged. "You need a nice gal pal!"

Mako's eyes darkened. "The point is to keep our secrets to ourselves. I don't think becoming pals with the new roommate is a good idea."

"You're the one that keeps saying we have to blend in - "

"For survival. We have to be human out there because if we aren't, they won't understand. They'll fear us, and then they'll fight us, because that's just how people are. Making friends with humans in the outside world is fine for appearances, but don't forget the real reason we're playing this game."

Korra frowned quietly. Her heart rate rate was picking up and she could feel herself getting breathless. It could have been because Mako was making her anxious, or maybe even because she hadn't let her lasagna heat up long enough in the microwave, but it was most likely because of that sun being bullied out of the sky by the full moon.

"Way to ruin the dinner conversation."

"I just don't want us to get so complacent about the idea of having a human in here," he said. "They're dangerous to us, just like we are to them. Out there, we're nice normal kids. In here, this is where our secrets come out. Once we have one of them living with us, we're going to have to work really hard on making sure they have no idea what we are. We have to be really good at being human."

The telltale beads of sweat began popping up on Korra's brow. Her hands quivered as she dropped her fork in the half-eaten family-size lasagna.

"Korra?" Bolin noticed.

"I...think it's time."

Despite all she ate, Korra was starting to feel empty. Her stomach grumbled, as if her human food wasn't satiating enough. At least she'd gotten some down, though. When she transformed on an empty stomach the wolf was even more out of control than usual.

Mako came around to help her stand up, but Korra pushed him aside. Her feeling of self was starting to slip away, but she could still walk. This was far from her first full moon, but it never got any easier.

"I'll catch up with you guys downstairs!" Bolin said. "Gonna grab the laptop!"

Typical Bolin. Korra managed to roll her eyes fondly as he poofed away upstairs.

"Ever since he learned how to teleport," she shook her head as Mako followed her to the basement. "I hope he remembers he can't teleport things with him. We can't afford a new laptop if he breaks that one like he did your fishbowl."

The basement was mostly unfurnished other than industrial-looking storage shelves, with a concrete floor and oddly pristine-white padded walls. That was because they'd soundproofed the entire space, a massively expensive endeavor, but it mostly worked. Korra's screams and howls were kept private and none of the neighbors could hear. When the construction company asked what they had needed soundproofing for, they'd told them it was going to be a home recording studio. Bolin sometimes called it that jokingly, "Time for Korra to record her album".

With some decorating, though, it would be okay for Bolin's new room. Well, except for the cage. Seven feet on each side of reinforced steel. Mako refused to tell them where he'd gotten it, but Korra did notice that whenever they walked past the window of the "exotic" sex shop on 67th, the owner would wink at him.

"Ugh…" Every part of her head began to ache, from the dull throb at the back of her skull to the sharp pain in her forehead. An incessant ringing began stabbing at her eardrums.

Mako helped her remove her clothes and folded them for the morning. With their history, there wasn't much need for modesty. Their lives were weird for plenty of reasons, and them being exes was the least weird of all. He took the leather straps, which funnily enough came with the cage, and bound her wrists together without batting an eye.

"We'll be all right," Korra said, noting Mako's sad expression. The boys hated her time of the month almost as much as she did. "You, me, and Bolin. We'll take care of each other no matter who else is here. That's all that matters."

"I know," he said. Korra went into her prison for the night and sat down hard. Her muscles were burning so painfully she could barely stand it anymore. All Mako could do was tie her legs, and then reinforce the leather bindings with chains that had also hilariously and conveniently come with the cage.

"I'm okay."

"I'm not." Mako attached the chains to the loops he'd installed into the cement floor.

Korra fell to her side, new chills wracking her body. Mako and Bolin used to try covering her with a blanket at this point, but the wolf always ripped it to shreds in seconds. Eventually, she managed to convince them not to bother. It was pointless, and kind of expensive.

"I never wanted you to have to see this." That was the main reason she'd broken up with him in the first place. It was the reason Korra broke up with everyone, really - previous boyfriends, family, and friends. This didn't have to be anyone's probl problem but hers.

Still, she was grateful every single day for Mako and Bolin.

"Well, you're stuck with us whether you like it or not." He put on a stern face, but she could see his worry. He got up and backed out of the cage, beginning the usual process of locking it.

"And we'll never leave you, either. No matter what," Korra assured him gently. "Thank you."

Bolin swept into the basement, laptop clutched in his hands. "You started without me!"

Her grin was really more just baring her clenched teeth. It was getting very close to the unimaginably painful part.

"Not the kind of thing I could hold in, Bo."

He set the laptop down and scooted over to sit on the floor by the cage. Even if Korra did try to attack him, it wasn't like she could hurt him. Mako had a chair by the stairs, so he could sit further away.

"You okay, Korra?"

"Yeah," she lied, curled in a fetal position. She looked at the clock. It was 7 in the evening. The sun didn't completely set until almost 9. They still had a long way to go. She could only hope this time she'd get lucky and pass out earlier.

"Large Master Bedroom W/ Attached Bath In Charming House," Bolin said through the bars. "The title for our ad."

"D-Don't forget to mention the sh-sh-shower/tub combo."

"You loved that tub," Mako said.

"Yeah, w-w-well, you have to share your b-b-bathroom with m-me now, buddy."

"Ugh, your hair gets everywhere!"

"Well, all y-your girly hair products take up so much space by the s-sink!" Korra countered. The cramping began. This was it.

"Sorry for being shiny and volumized!" Mako retorted, trying to keep the banter going. But they could see they were losing her.

"I'm gonna mention we have an extra spot in the driveway for another car," Bolin said, his voice strangled as spasms jerked Korra's muscles violently, her fingers clenched and eyes squeezed shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks and hit the floor as she started to gasp.

"That's a good idea," Mako said. "And make sure to say we're only a five minute walk to the bus line."

"Easy commute," Bolin agreed. At some point he had turned around. He could never stomach the sight of her transformation. He could barely even handle the sound - the cracks, the squishing, the scratching. He was staring at the laptop now, his fingers quaking as he typed. Any second now, Korra would start to scream, and that was the hardest part for him.

The change was beyond excruciating. It could take as long as three hours sometimes, during which Korra felt every bone break, every tendon and ligament stretch, and every organ tear apart and reform. Korra felt her heart stop and restart again, her lungs mutate, her intestines twist inside her gut. Fangs tore through her gums, thick fur erupted and spread like fire across her skin, a tail burst from her back like someone trying to rip out the bottom of her spine. She felt everything, as if there were hundreds of surgeons tearing her apart and sewing her back together for hours without anesthesia. She felt like she was going to die, and she begged the wolf for death, every single time.

Korra used to ask Mako and Bolin to leave her alone. They didn't need to stay and keep her company, and she didn't want them to hear her. It wasn't her anymore, anyway. There was a point where the girl they were trying to comfort was just gone, and only a wild animal remained.

They never budged.

"Quiet neighborhood," Mako continued. He reached into the crevice between the washing machine and dryer and pulled out his rifle, resting it on his lap. "Living room furnished with couch, TV, and coffee table. Remodelled kitchen with pots and pans…"

"And the best roommates ever," Bolin said, just as Korra's first tormented screams pierced through the basement, changing back and forth between cries of agony and howls of rage.

"And the best roommates ever," his brother echoed.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note**_

* * *

 _Obviously Legend of Korra and Being Human are copyrighted/trademarked/whatever by their respective owners and this work of fanfiction is purely for entertainment blah, blah, blah._


	2. Slaughterhouse

_**CHAPTER TWO - Slaughterhouse**_

* * *

"Ow! Watch it!"

Mako and Bolin were trying to carry Korra's bed sideways through Bolin's bedroom doorway. It wasn't a struggle to get it out of her old room, but they hadn't realized his door was so much smaller.

Mako had his super-human vampirey strength, and Bolin was plenty strong even as a ghost, but Korra still would have been able to maneuver better. Especially since Bolin was spending most of his ghostly energy just making himself solid enough to get a good grip on the bed frame. He was still mastering the art of making himself corporeal, which meant picking and choosing which body parts to solidify, and concentrating his energy where it mattered. This time, it was all in his arms, holding up the stupid bed.

"If you two would just let me help," Korra said irritably.

But it was only eight hours post-transformation and she was still in recovery mode. She never remembered her time as the wolf, but Mako and Bolin had been her werewolf prison guards for a year now. They were able to describe to her why, even though she was safely enclosed in a cage, she always woke up battered.

The injuries happened during the change back. It was all the same - the crunching bones, the distorted muscle, the strained organs. The difference was that the wolf had to feel it this time, not Korra. It thrashed in the cage with her partially human body, tossing itself violently into the bars, tearing and scratching at her human skin as it stretched across its oversized skeleton. The agony sent it into madness, and the wolf could do a lot more damage than she could. One time, it had broken some of her ribs and she hadn't even completely healed by the next full moon. They re-fractured and the cycle continued for three months.

Luckily, Korra escaped this transformation with relatively minimal damage. Some bruises and a long, deep cut in her arm, which was just enough to be delegated the job of light sweeping and folding.

"I don't think it'll fit," Mako sighed. "We may have to take the frame apart first."

"Mr. Handyman over here," Bolin snorted. Korra scowled impatiently.

"Come on, all it needs is one...good... SHOVE !"

She lowered her shoulder and threw her entire body's weight into the bed frame. It popped right through the door like a cork, toppling cleanly through Bolin and loudly on top of his brother.

"Arrghh!" Korra fell to the ground, clutching her arm and the bruises she hadn't realized were there.

"Ahhh!" Mako echoed.

"You guys okay?!" Bolin gasped, going back and forth between them.

"I'm fine," Korra groaned, visibly not fine. She waved away his attempts to help her up. "I'm fine, I just...need a breather here. Let me lie down a sec."

"What the hell, Korra?!" Mako demanded, as his brother pulled him to his feet.

"That was admittedly ill-advised," she said from the floor. "But at least the hardest part is done. Thank god moving your stuff was so easy, Bo."

His room was considerably smaller than her old master bedroom, and even a smidge smaller than Mako's room, but all it had housed were Bolin's collection of comics, video games, action figures, models, and a single armchair. It was easy to move his junk to the basement. It barely took three trips, and the boys at least let her carry a box of vintage space alien figurines.

Korra's stuff was harder. Other than her bed, she had her clothes, tons of sports and exercise equipment, her boxing bag, assorted school supplies, her desk and chair, and the biggest textbooks ever.

"Do you just, like, go out of your way to own the heaviest things in the universe?" Mako wheezed. "Jesus."

"I'm gonna get you some ice," Bolin said, disappearing abruptly.

Mako came over to help her up. "All we have to do now is flip the bed over and get the mattress on it."

"I'll fix everything up myself later," Korra said, wincing as she pushed away his extended hand like she had his brother's. She eased into a sitting position by herself.

Mako scowled, crouched down next to her, and gave her a good poke in the ribs. She howled and pushed him away. When she took a peek under her shirt, she saw a dark, angry red bruise. Soon it would turn blue, then green, then yellow, before returning to her skin's normal tan color. Just in time to start the process over again at the new moon.

"I saw that before we got your clothes on. You're still all messed up, so you're not doing anything ," Mako said firmly.

"Asshole."

"That's a yuan in the Swear Jar, you brat."

"You owe the Swear Jar like, fifty!" Korra accused.

Bolin returned, handing her a bag of ice that she alternated between her ribs and shoulder.

"I heard Swear Jar!" Bolin crowed, grabbing the long-suffering old peanut butter container off his shelf. He had implemented it a few months ago to try and curb their bad attitudes, but if anything, it made them more annoyed. Korra shoved in a yuan, speculating that at this point it was very likely they could make rent with its contents and nip this whole crazy roommate thing in the bud.

She watched grumpily as the boys moved around her furniture. They managed to ease the bed down from it's sideways position and threw the mattress on top. Then they fell on top of it dramatically.

"This is a whole new reason to never move out of this house," Mako groaned. "Moving sucks."

"You couldn't be interested in 6-inch action figures and Blu-rays like me?" Bolin whined. "You had to be into weight-lifting and boxing?"

"And yoga," Korra pointed out. "Not everything I own is heavy, my yoga mat barely weighed anything."

Although she was the one who got to carry the yoga mat. On their insistence. Korra was sure she could have at least carried her punching bag without problems either. The textbooks, too. But her roommates were stubborn macho men, convinced that she was completely incapacitated after a change. She loved them dearly, but sometimes she could just as easily knock their heads together.

"You can't even feel pain!" Mako rolled his eyes at his brother. "Or fatigue. Or anything. What are you complaining about?" He punched him in the side of the head.

"Ow!" Bolin yelped, even though his fist sailed through his head harmlessly

"You can't feel that!"

"It hurt emotionally!"

Korra laughed and dragged herself back up to her feet. "So, all we need to do is take pictures of the empty master bedroom, so we can add them to the listing."

"Ooooh, oooh! Dibs! Dibs! " Bolin grabbed her phone from her pocket and took off.

They let Bolin run around the house snapping pictures of the room, the bathroom, and new ones of the living room, kitchen, and driveway. We even allowed him a few group selfies to get him to shut up. Neither of the brothers showed up in the pictures, of course, but Korra figured he just enjoyed the action of taking pictures. Mako always said he was the artsy one.

Korra started preparing some lunch in the kitchen as Bolin updated the photos on their online listing at the table. Mako was hunched over next to him, reading over his shoulder.

"Hey, wait. Bolin, go back to that last site."

"What, this one?"

"Click on that."

She looked up from her pile of Ramen packages to see them both frowning at something. "What are you guys looking at?"

Mako looked at her grimly and read aloud from the laptop.

"Few people think twice about the Bau Ling, a fairly nondescript neighborhood of Republic City. Sandwiched between the rough-and-tumble of Dragon Flats and the more popular White Falls, Baul Ling often lacks a distinct personality that most other Republic City areas boast."

"Please tell me you're not reading our listing," Korra joked.

"It's an article we found about the house," Bolin said quietly.

"While having little in the way of nightlife and entertainment, Bau Ling does have an extremely low crime rate that makes it a perfect home to many young families," Mako continued. "In fact, only two major violent crimes have been recorded in the neighborhood's hundred year history."

She shrugged. "Okay, so our neighborhood is lukewarm and boring at best. It's a good studying environment! And look at that, we're safe. "

Mako frowned. "However, Bau Ling's two murders received widespread coverage across the United Republic, due to their extremely graphic nature, the unsolved mystery surrounding both cases, and the fact that they occurred at the same residence - now known to many as the Slaughterhouse."

"What?!" Korra yelped. She abandoned her ramen and wedged myself between Mako and Bolin to read the article myself. "The most recent murder occurred in the summer of 2014, at 257 North Spirit Street. On the night of June 28th, a 20-year-old male college student was found severely mutilated in an unoccupied house. Some witnesses claim the young man had a companion, but no other victims have been recovered."

Upon waking up as a new vampire, Mako had been disoriented, unable to even recognize the mangled remains of his younger brother. Panicked, he'd left the scene, before anyone else had discovered Bolin. Korra remembered the night he told her that story, right there in the same living room they watched TV in. Even now, hearing the story still gave her chills.

Mako continued. "Only a few witnesses were available, but all agreed that the young man was chased into the house by several other men. Strangely enough, the scene and the body were all clean - free of DNA samples, fingerprints, or any other identifying evidence could be recovered from the scene by forensics experts - without telltale signs that evidence had purposefully been purged."

Vampires didn't leave evidence. They didn't shed hair, their hands lacked the chemistry to leave distinct fingerprints, and they moved with the strength and quickness of an apex predator.

"The discovery shocked the residents of Bau Ling, who had enjoyed the peaceful quiet for seventy years. Coincidentally, in 1945, a woman was violently killed and gruesomely dismembered in the exact same house, by equally mysterious circumstances."

"Wait, really?!" Korra's eyebrows shot up. Another person had died in this house? She looked over at Bolin, but he just shrugged.

"I'm the only ghost here that I know of."

"Rumors that 257 North Spirit Street is haunted have been renewed of late, many neighbors claiming to see windows and doors opening on their own - "

They glared at Bolin, who grinned sheepishly.

"Oops."

" - and occasional strange noises that some residents claim emanate from the house's basement."

It was her turn to blush. Before they'd completed the soundproofing for Korra's "studio", they had gotten more than a few complaints.

"Police have been dispatched on two occasions to the house, which is now home to a pair of innocuous young roommates that apparently enjoy watching television loudly, and taking advantage of the relatively low rent - "

Bolin scoffed. "Not low enough."

" - but no foul play was ever discovered. A calm may have settled over Republic City's Bau Ling in the past year, but there is no doubt that residents have lingering thoughts of the Slaughterhouse at the back of all their minds."

All three of them fell silent for a moment.

"I wonder what the chances are that any prospective roommates looking at our online listing don't know how to use the Internet," Korra said.

"We are never going to find a roommate," Bolin grumbled. "They call us the Slaughterhouse! "

"Our rent is lower than other places in the area," she pointed out. "And we have a parking spot, we're close to the trains and buses, the master bedroom is amazing, I mean, we have a lot of things going for us."

"Despite being a haunted Slaughterhouse ," Mako said dryly. He pushed the laptop back at his brother.

It probably was going to be a little harder for them, but they would have to deal. There was a lot riding on this hypothetical roommate. They had only been able to afford the house because of Bolin's murder, the cash from the lawsuit, and the fact that Mako and Korra both had been working. But the bottom line was, it was still a nice 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house made for a family that had way more money than them. The time to renew their lease was coming up and Raiko wasn't going to let them sign unless they could prove they could afford it.

"Once I find a couple jobs - "

" If you find a couple jobs," Korra reminded him. Predictably, Mako was still trying to pull them away from the idea of a new roommate. "We can't wait, we need money right now. There's no choice."

He let his forehead hit the table dramatically. "Fine. Just list it, Bo."

"Aye, aye, captain!" Bolin typed and clicked with gusto.

Korra returned to her cooking, quietly telling herself that everything would be okay. They would find a roommate, manage to keep all their secrets, renew the lease, and make it another year. Mako would find a job or two and she'd graduate with her degree and find a full-time position that paid well. Bolin would have them, none of them would ever be alone, and they'd keep each other sane. They'd keep each other human, just like they always had been.

As long as Mako, Bolin, and Korra stayed a family, they could keep going like this until...whenever. Whatever came next.

"What godforsaken concoction are you making now?" Mako asked, breaking her out of her thoughts.

"Um. Ramen with eggs, salami chunks, and the extra cheese powder from that popcorn thing. Want some?"

He made a face. "I'll stick with the last of the O-Neg in the fridge, thanks."

"Do you have to be so annoyingly conservative with food," Korra complained as she dumped the ramen in the boiling water and set to work chopping up chunks of salami.

"A Food Prude!" Bolin exclaimed. They both raised their hands up across the kitchen from one another, slapping each other an air-high five. It drove Mako crazy when they did that. He rolled his eyes.

"You'd better hope werewolves can't get hypertension, diabetes, or high cholesterol."

"Why don't you - oh, crap." As Korra was dumping salami bits into the ramen, the piece of gauze that Bolin had used to dress the long laceration on her arm began to dangle. It dropped into the pot before she could catch it. "Aw c'mon."

She fished the gauze, crusted in dried blood, out of the ramen and tossed it into the trash. Then, Mako watched in horror as Korra continued to stir the noodles and tasted a spoonful.

"That is disgusting , Korra. And I'm a vampire ."

"What, like I'm gonna dump out the whole thing?" she snorted. Korra was the only one eating it, anyway, and it wasn't like her arm had hemorrhaged into the pot. "Don't be a baby."

"I hope our listing is good," Bolin interrupted wisely, before their bickering became a stupid fight and the Swear Jar got another deposit. "I tried to talk the house up as much as I could, so hopefully no one dwells on the whole my gruesome murder thing."

"God, you didn't mention it, did you?" Mako scooted over again.

"No, but I did wonder...should I?"

"No! Of course not!" Korra squawked. "Are you kidding?!"

Bolin looked uncomfortable. "It feels like something that should be disclosed. Slaughterhouse ?"

"Listen, if they see the house and ask about it it, of course we'll tell them. We won't lie. But at least let's have them see the room and make that judgement for themselves. It really is a good deal in a decent neighborhood. If you really think about it, we're kind of doing them a favor."

Bolin squirmed. "We'll have to be extra careful. If we can, maybe we get the human out of the house when Korra changes. And we keep an eye on you, Mako, just in case. You'll tell us if you're feeling...vampirey, right?"

"Obviously," Mako said, sounding offended. But Korra's monthly changes and Mako being tempted weren't the only liabilities. Bolin couldn't hurt a human, but he could spook them pretty well, even if by accident.

"Bo, I get that you're worried," Korra said. "But we've been through tougher things than this already. No one will get hurt. We won't let that happen. We have no choice."

He still looked a little skeptical, but he shrugged. "Okay, well, it might be a moot point anyway. I just did another search on this place. We're kind of popular online. A lot of people might recognize the address and pictures."

After a full week passed with no response to their ad, and no new job prospects for Mako, Korra begrudgingly admitted Bolin was right - none of it might work. He used his artistry of words to spruce up the post and added a few more pristine photos of the room and house, but they still got nothing. They even lowered the portion of the rent to the point that it was just barely helpful.

In all honesty, Korra couldn't really blame anyone for steering clear. If she was a normal human that had read all the things on the internet about the house and its haunting, she would probably want to avoid it, too. Her brilliant idea seemed more and more silly as the days went by, and their bank accounts were getting emptier and emptier. They were already late on rent, as per usual, but it was so late that Raiko was probably going to be forced to action soon.

So when Bolin popped in front of Mako and Korra while they were watching a zombie movie on TV telling them that someone had responded to their ad, they thought he was messing with them.

"Bolin, not now," Korra said grumpily. "I think Ginger was infected with the virus but isn't telling Nuktuk."

"No, I'm serious! Someone's interested in the room!"

Mako snorted. "I thought you changed our email settings so we would stop getting spammed by bots."

"It's not a spambot!" he cried. "You guys!"

He turned the TV off and Mako and Korra both jumped off the couch.

"The fuck do you think you're doing?!" She grabbed the remote.

"Swear Jar!"

"Have you lost your mind?!" Mako demanded. "Nuktuk was about to tell Ginger how he feels about her!"

Bolin took his phone and opened up the email.

"There's this girl, a student at Avatar University like you, Korra!" he read from her phone. "She's looking for a cheap place off campus to live for the semester, if not until she graduates in May. I guess she's a senior like you, too. Twenty-one years old."

Korra stared at him incredulously. "Wait. You're serious? Someone's interested in the room?!"

"Yes!"

"A co-ed?" Mako made a face. "No, thank you."

"Excuse you," Korra sneered. "No one calls them co-eds anymore except old people and perverts. Also, I'm a co-ed."

"But not, like, a co-ed co-ed."

"Shut up."

It was perfect. College students kept busy. They were always studying, working, or partying. If she was the shut-in type, she'd just stay in her room with her private bath and not even need to go into the common areas much. If she was a party girl, all they had to do was enforce a strict no-visitors policy and she'd spend all her time away from the house. And most college kids went home on weekends or holidays, so she'd be out of their hair. Perfect.

"What if she's like you ," Mako asked. "The kind of college girl that studies on the coffee table instead of her room and then yells at us for watching TV too loud?"

Korra ignored him. "Tell her four-thirty tomorrow afternoon, Bo. And make sure she brings proof of employment or a guarantor form co-signed by her parents or whatever."

"Oh, come on," Mako whined. Korra pushed his shoulder lightly.

"I'm sorry, but no other fish are biting. We have to take what we can get. Write her, Bolin."

He typed the message as his brother sulked. "Okay. Things are officially weird. This time next week, it may no longer be just the three of us.

"It will be," Mako said firmly. "Whoever they are, doesn't matter. It'll always be just the three of us."

Korra nodded. "Just the three of us."

* * *

"We have a visitor!" Bolin called from where he'd been watching from Mako's bedroom window, waiting for a glimpse of their prospective new roommate. "She's got this cool red car. She parked it across the street and is walking over right now! Wow , she's pretty!"

"Shut up, Bolin!" Mako shushed him and pulled him away from the window. "Remember - you stay in this room, okay? You do not come out until she's gone."

"Oh, come onnnn ," Bolin whined. "You know she can't see or hear me!"

"We can't have you accidentally knocking things over or whatever," Korra said sympathetically. "We can't have anything haunted house-y happen."

"I'll be completely noncorporeal, I swear," he promised, holding up both his hands. "Won't be able to touch anything."

" We can still see you, and can't risk you distracting us. She won't rent from us if she's thinks we're weird."

"I'll stay quiet!"

Mako had to snicker at that. "Sorry, little bro. Just stay put, all right?"

He pouted and while his brother seemed to have developed a resistance to it, it still tugged at Korra's heartstrings to shut the door on him.

"We'll play XBox when she's gone, okay?" she called through the door. Bolin only grumbled back.

The doorbell rang, signalling the official start of Operation: Being Human . Mako prodded Korra forward and they made their way downstairs to let the new girl in. She noted he still looked hesitant about letting a stranger into their home.

"Be cool," she hissed.

"I was born cool. You're the dork here, remember?"

She punched his arm. He poked her. She elbowed him. He gave her hair a tug.

"Stop it!"

" You stop it!"

"Um…" a timid voice said from outside. "I can hear you."

They quickly composed themselves and Korra opened the door.

"Hi, there!" she greeted, immediately putting her charm on full blast.

The young woman at their doorstep smiled awkwardly. She was really tall, Mako's height, and calling her pretty like Bolin had was an understatement. She was gorgeous , with thick, flowing jet-black hair and ruby red lips. Her eyes were somewhere between Mako's deep amber and Bolin's vibrant green, like honey in steaming hot tea, both soothing and searing. Her gray skirt and button-down top made Korra feel like maybe she should have worn something nicer than track pants and a t-shirt, and maybe done something different with her plain brown hair.

She was struck silent for a moment, taking her all in. Whatever confident charm and swagger she'd saved up for this moment just sort of dripped away.

"Hello," she said, holding out her hand. "I'm Asami."

"Oh. Uh, I mean, hi!" She shook her hand. It looked soft and well-manicured, but she was surprised to feel some hardened callouses in her palm.

"I'm guessing you're Korra?"

"Yes!" Korra exclaimed, too enthusiastically She wanted to sink into the floor at that point. God. "That's me. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I'm glad it's you, it'd be weird if he was Korra!" Asami joked. Korra could feel her entire goddamn body blushing.

"I mean, sorry I'm being awkward. I...didn't have enough coffee this morning?"

"Ooh, a caffeine addict. We'll get along."

Korra barked out too loud of a laugh and pulled Mako forward so he could say something. Anything.

"And I'm Mako." The asshole looked thoroughly amused at her floundering. He hadn't bothered to shake her hand, instead keeping his hands deep in his pockets. Korra gave him a look. He had to try a little harder than that. Asami had to like them as much as she liked the house, if this was going to work.

"Why don't you come on in?" Mako decided to try a tentative smile.

Asami grinned back. "Thanks."

She walked into the house and cautiously took a look around. From the entryway she had a pretty good line of sight into the kitchen and living room, both of which we had scrubbed so clean it looked like a photo from a magazine. It had never looked this great before, and it probably never would again.

"How was the trip here?" Korra asked conversationally, trying to start things over as a competent, normal, non-crazy person. "We saw you drive up, I hope there wasn't too much traffic."

It was Asami's turn to laugh, a very pleasant sound. "Well, it's Republic City."

"Tell me about it," Mako rolled his eyes, earning himself another smile. "I drive, too. A junky old 2001 Satomobile Flash. That's a nice SM Stallion you've got. 1977?"

"Close, it's a '75. You've got a good eye for cars," Asami said, impressed.

"You've got good taste in cars. How does a 32 year old car still look so good?"

"Well, I'm partial to Satomobiles. You could say it's my hobby. I like restoring old cars," she said, a coy glint in her eye. Why the hell was Mako so good at this, all of a sudden?

"Luckily, we don't have to do a whole lot of driving," Korra said, almost feeling like she was butting in on the conversation. "Like our listing said, we're a five minute walk to the bus and then it's like, ten minutes to the subway right into the downtown area. But we do have that parking spot for you if you really want to drive."

"I'm definitely hanging onto my car for mostly sentimental reasons," Asami said. "Honestly, your parking spot is the main reason I wanted to see this place. Right now I live on campus and the monthly for parking on campus is a little ridiculous."

Korra knew parking in the city was a trial, but not firsthand. Mako had his car, the dilapidated old death trap he'd inherited from his parents after they died, and he always had trouble parking it anywhere. He'd given up his space next to the house for their new roommate, and the only open spot he found to park his beast of a motor vehicle was five blocks away.

"Well, then it's yours. But just so you know, I go to Avatar University like you, and via public transit I'm there in half an hour no matter what the traffic is like."

"That's right, you're Fire Ferret too!" Asami grinned at me. "What year are you?"

"I'm a senior. I'll hopefully be getting my bachelor's degree in May," Korra said. "Kinesiology with a minor in Exercise Science."

"Cool. I'm in the last year of my Masters. Engineering."

"Oh, your email said you were twenty-one," Mako said, eyebrow raised.

Asami nodded. "I am. I graduated high school and undergrad a little early."

"Wow," Korra found herself saying pathetically.

She looked over at Mako. "What about you? Are you a student?"

He shook his head. "Never had the time."

"Oh, okay. What is it you do?"

"Security," he said, carefully neglecting to mention that he wasn't working in security at that very moment. "Maybe someday I'll try going back to school, though."

"It's a big investment, but it pays off in the end," she shot Korra a playful glance. "At least that's what we hope, right?"

I grinned at her. "It better. Here, let's go look at the kitchen."

Mako and Korra stood at the entrance and watched as Asami inspected the countertops and appliances. She asked permission before opening the cabinets, which Korra knew gave Mako some peace of mind. At least she was respectful of privacy. That would be important if she was going to live with a secret vampire, werewolf, and ghost.

"It's not much," Korra admitted. "Small table, four chairs, but all the appliances are only a year old. Plus we have all our own pots and pans and stuff so you don't need to bring much, but if you want your own stuff we can make room."

"Can you cook?" Asami asked, pointing at the pots set on the stove.

"Yes I can," Korra said, at the same time Mako answered, "No, she can't."

She laughed. "What about you, Mako?"

"Sometimes, but I don't really eat a whole lot."

"Well, I'm a pretty good cook," Asami grinned as she inspected the stove. Korra pulled Mako aside.

"She's interested!" she whispered. "She's talking about how she can contribute. She likes it!"

"Yeah, well." Typical Mako.

"Remember - we need her," Korra hissed, before turning back to Asami. "Hey, you want to get a look at the living room?"

It wasn't much to look at, just a TV, tiny coffee table, and couch, but Bolin had amassed a ludicrously large pile of DVD's and Blu-Ray's that Asami excitedly went to look at. Korra had to smile at how delighted she was, pouring over the nerdy movies and TV shows, and Mako noticed.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. Shut up."

"I don't understand you."

"Ooooh, which one of you is into Battle Stars: Galaxy ?" she gushed, spotting the box set of Bolin's beloved sci-fi TV series.

Mako pointed at Korra as she pointed at him. Asami blinked at them, confused.

"We both like it," Korra lied.

"Oh, and Flamefly ? You guys have really good taste," she said. They just smiled cluelessly.

"Yeah, it's...yeah. We have Netflix, too," Korra said.

"How's your internet?"

"Uh, good?" She guessed that was the appropriate answer.

"I mean, how fast is it?" Asami clarified, amused.

Mako and Korra shared a blank look.

"It's the lowest package," he said finally. "Whatever speed that is."

Asami wrinkled her nose, an action Korra couldn't help but find endearing.

"Would it be okay if we were to upgrade to a higher speed and I paid my share plus the difference?"

That was way over their heads. Bolin was the one who handled that kind of thing, so they just nodded.

"That would be fine," Korra said. "I mean, I don't get it, but it sounds fine."

"Wanna see the room?" Mako asked, obviously wanting to move things along.

"Lead the way!" Asami said. When they got to the top of the stairs, Korra noticed she faltered before going forward. "Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I wasn't sure what to expect when I came here. I read the stories about the murders, and all the rumors about ghosts. This house doesn't have the greatest reputation, you know. And frankly, I kinda had doubts about the kind of people that would choose to live in the Slaughterhouse in the first place."

"I'm hoping there's a but after that…?" Korra grinned nervously.

Asami laughed. " But you two seem really nice. By the way, are you guys...you know…" She pointed back and forth between them. "Together?"

They both blanched.

"No," Mako said quickly.

" God , no," Korra added.

"Hey!"

"I mean - " Korra looked at Asami, who seemed embarrassed for asking. "We used to date. That ended like, years ago. But we're still really good friends, just housemates now. Separate rooms and everything. That's actually Mako's room right here."

"Door's closed because it's a mess," he said quickly. Hopefully Bolin found the strength within to sit tight. They knew he could hear them in the hallway.

Asami still looked sheepish. "Sorry, I didn't mean to - "

"It's fine," Mako said hastily.

"More than fine," Korra assured her.

"Why do you guys have a three bedroom house if there's only two of you?" she wondered. "I imagine it's kind of expensive for two people, even at this price. Why not just find a smaller place?"

Mako and Korra shared a panicked look.

"We just really like the location. Can't beat it," he said. Korra swooped in to change the subject.

"This is the bathroom Mako and I share, and that's my room next to it."

They had decided to leave her room open, so Asami wouldn't get weirded out by a hallway full of closed doors. Korra had spruced up Bolin's old room as best she could and was pretty pleased with the results. Asami looked impressed, at least.

"I'm guessing you're a fitness enthusiast?" she commented, looking at her punching bag, weights, and various other sports equipment.

"I like keeping active," Korra said mildly. It wasn't like she had a choice. Being a werewolf meant she was constantly brimming with an almost animalistic-level energy, even when it wasn't lose to the full moon. It was annoying at first, made her hyper, careless, and impatient, but she'd long since embraced it. Thankfully, she'd found a way to channel it all into physical training.

"Whoa…" Asami's eyes widened at her trophy display. "Coral belts in Judo and Jiujitsu?!"

Korra's eyebrows shot up. "You know what a coral belt is? Most people just know, like, black belts."

"I've trained in martial arts since I was little. I'm a black belt in Judo myself."

It was her turn to be impressed. "Wow, really?"

"Yeah. My dad made sure I'd be able to take care of myself after…well, he was a little over-protective. Made me take a bunch of classes, although I did end up loving them. Have you been doing it since childhood too?"

Korra noted her hesitation when talking about her dad, but chose not to pursue it. She was entitled to some secrets just like they were. For example, she wasn't about to tell her the only reason she practiced martial arts was because becoming a werewolf meant she'd had to expend inhuman amounts of energy every day or else she'd go absolutely insane.

"Um, no, it's a relatively new hobby," she said. "Like, just the past couple years."

"Jeez, you got all these honors in a few years?" Asami looked at her with admiration that made her ears heat up again. "I'm so jealous. And maybe a little afraid of you, heh."

"I'm a lot afraid of her," Mako said dryly. Korra gave him a shove.

"Anyway, your room is this one across from us…"

They led her to the master bedroom. The bedroom was considerably huge, plenty of room for a queen-sized bed, desk, and other kinds of furniture, but it was the private bathroom that they hoped would win a roommate over.

"Wow, it's bigger than I thought," Asami commented, walking around her former room. "I'm almost not sure if I even have enough stuff to fill this place!

"We would be charging you a larger part of the rent for it," Mako said, all business. "But we figured it would be worth it."

She wandered into the bathroom, nodding appreciatively at the beloved tub that Korra had to sacrifice.

"I think it might be." Asami stepped back out and peeked into one of the closets. "It's actually a great deal, in this neighborhood close to all the transportation. Although, I guess that's because of the whole murders and ghosts thing."

"Are you...worried? About the murder thing?" Korra wondered.

"I don't know. Have you two seen any ghosts?" She smirked at them.

Mako snorted. "Yeah right."

"Don't tell me you believe in those things," Korra chuckled anxiously. "Ghosts. Oh, please. "

"I don't, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to live with people who did," Asami chuckled. "In addition to being paranoid and overprotective, my father was religious and superstitious. I left home for many reasons, as you can imagine."

"Oh, well, you don't have to worry about that here," Korra said. "We think the idea of ghosts or whatever is just - "

Suddenly Bolin popped into existence by the doorway, grinning widely. Mako and Korra had to bite their lips between their teeth to stop themselves from yelling at him in shock.

"Sorry you guys, I couldn't help it!" he said quickly, confident at least in the fact that Asami couldn't see or hear him. "Stay cool, I just wanted to see her. Wow , she's pretty! "

Mako and Korra struggled not to stare directly at him, so Asami wouldn't think they were freaks gaping at nothing.

She, however, had no problem looking.

"Oh, why thank you!" Asami smiled, right at Bolin. "And who are you?"

* * *

 _ **Author's Note**_

* * *

 _I wasn't sure what I expected the reception to a Being Human/Legend of Korra AU would be but it definitely wasn't this, lol, thanks guys! I knew there had to be a few other people that liked both, despite them being like polar opposites :-P_

 _Also, you may have noticed I changed this from first person to third. That was done for...reasons. Hope the transition wasn't too bad._


	3. Caged

_**CHAPTER THREE - Caged**_

* * *

Everyone froze. It seemed like entire minutes were ticking by while they all just stood there, stunned.

"Wait...I know your face from somewhere," Asami said, wrinkling her nose in thought. "Do you go to Avatar University too?"

Korra felt goosebumps. Even if she hadn't looked up the house and saw Bolin's picture online, his murder had been all over the news for weeks last summer. They had shown his picture nonstop on every channel, every newspaper, every homepage. The innocent, loveable youth with a bright future, murdered by an unknown gang of thugs in a really good neighborhood. It had been a big deal.

"Hello? What's wrong with you guys?" She waved her hand at them.

Bolin's eyes were wide as saucers. He gaped at Korra and Mako, completely at a loss. It had been a year since anyone but them had spoken to him. A year since anyone had even looked in his direction. Now, probably for the first time in his life, he had no words. This girl was just standing there like everything was normal, making eye contact and asking questions.

They had no answers.

"Um..." Korra cleared her throat. "I...just...you can see him?"

Asami didn't even need to say anything. The quirk in her eyebrows said it all. That was a weird-ass question to ask.

It took a moment for Korra to register that Mako was grabbing at her shoulder. The expression on his face startled her - it had been a very, very long time since the vampire had actually been afraid of something. When you were literally the thing of nightmares, you were generally the one that did the scaring. And yet, there he was, nervously pulling her behind him for safety.

"Who are you?" he snarled.

"What?" Asami asked blankly.

"Ignore him," Korra said quickly, pushing him off and pressing a hand to his chest to calm him. "Mako, would you chill out, please?"

Easier said than done. They had no idea why this stranger could suddenly see and hear Bolin, when literally no one else could, and that made this "normal" human girl the most terrifying thing in a house full of monsters.

Granted, no other vampires or werewolves ever really had the opportunity to come to the house and see or hear Bolin, so their assumption that only supernaturals could see him may have been largely untested. But among the endless parade of passerbys, delivery guys, and other people that loitered around the neighborhood, there was never a single human who noticed him, no matter how much he didn't shut up.

Bolin scampered behind Korra and whispered into her ear.

"Abort! Abort!"

Whatever Asami was, they needed to shut down Operation: Being Human and get her out of the house before she realized what she was actually looking at. A line of freaks.

"This is just Mako's little brother," Korra said hastily. "We told him to stay in Mako's room. We were trying to hide the fact that he, uh, lives here too. He's, um, he's really obnoxious and rude and likes listening to 80s pop really loud in the middle of the night, so…"

For just a second, Bolin managed to stop looking terrified and looked thoroughly insulted

"...it gets super crowded and loud in this house sometimes. Lots of Duran Duran. Sorry, this must not be what you were expecting. We're awful and deceptive, oh well! Let me show you to the door! Sorry for wasting your time!"

Asami stumbled as Korra forcefully tried to usher her out. She was already in the hallway before she managed to whirl around.

"Wait! What's the matter?" she demanded. "I like the room!"

"We have cockroaches," Korra said.

"What?"

"And rats."

"What is going on here?!"

Mako was still seething suspiciously. "Did someone send you here?"

"I saw your ad on Craigslist. I emailed you guys and you said I could come. What is your problem?!" Asami scowled and turned back to Bolin. "And you, why do you look so familiar? You must go the the university too, right?"

"He does!" Korra yelped, at the exact same time Mako said, "He doesn't."

But Asami was ignoring them now, peering at Bolin with her brow knitted in concentration. "Have we met before?"

"Don't answer her," Mako hissed. "Get back in my room, Bo."

Asami suddenly snapped her fingers. " Bo! As in Bolin, right?"

Korra was just about ready to pass out at that point. Mako grew even paler. Asami didn't seem to notice either of their reactions, instead squinting her eyes to scrutinize the poor, speechless ghost.

"Bolin. That's your name, isn't it?" she asked him. "Why do I know your name? Where do I know you from?"

"It's a small campus!" Korra practically yelled. Avatar University was actually the largest university in the United Republic, but she was desperately grasping at straws. There had to be a way out of this. "Everyone knows everyone somehow, right?"

Now it was Asami's turn to be suspicious. "Seriously, what's going on here?"

Bolin swallowed hard, a purely vestigial reflex that he apparently had been saving for this exact appropriate situation.

"I, uh, I should probably go," he squeaked finally, his voice tiny and very un-Bolin. But Korra could see the wheels turning in Asami's head. Slowly, a look of horrified realization dawned on her face, and she knew it was all over. The jig was up.

"Wait a minute... Bolin ...are you…?" she gasped. "You're the boy from the news. Last year, last summer, the boy that was chased into…"

The Slaughterhouse. He looked stricken. She had finally pieced it together.

"A-Asami…" Korra began, although she had no idea what to say after that.

"No way. No fucking way," she whispered. "How can...you're the boy that was murdered!"

"Okay, that's enough. Get out of here, Bo," Mako tried to move his brother away. Unfortunately, his efforts to defuse the situation went south as his arms went right through him. Asami staggered back.

"What the fuck. What the fuck?! "

Korra held up her hands cautiously and slowly inched towards her, as if Asami was a frightened pet and she was just trying to get her back in the carrier so they could go to the vet.

"Okay, wait. Listen, this isn't - I mean, we can explain - "

But she wasn't interested. She bolted down the hallway, towards the stairs from where they came. Mako was, of course, faster. He snagged her by the arm, but to everyone's surprise, she grabbed his hand and crouched over, leaning all her weight forward and sending the mighty vampire toppling over her back and into the staircase. He tumbled to the bottom, stunned by the decorated black belt.

They all took a moment to be somewhat impressed by that.

"Korra, move!"

"Right, right - " She took off after her, but despite her peak fitness and physique, Korra wasn't an all-powerful vampire. Asami had a head start and was already opening the front door.

Bolin, however, was becoming quite a powerful ghost. He teleported in front of the terrified girl and allowed her to pass completely through his body. Korra knew firsthand that for whatever cosmic, supernatural reason, moving through a spirit was unsettling. The only time she'd done it was an accident - she had stumbled in the kitchen and Bolin had instinctively tried to catch her. She fell through him and the entire experience took maybe half a second, but for Korra it had felt much longer. She was just falling through an endless dense fog, unable to see or breathe. At some point she blacked out, and when she woke up feeling like hours had passed, Bolin had to convince her that it had just been a moment, and that she was in fact still in the kitchen with a stew just starting to bubble on the stove.

Asami staggered, falling to the floor in a daze.

"Sorry!" he apologized. He reached down to take her arm, and she just stared blankly, unable to regain her composure. She tried in vain to shove the ghost away, but her arms were just flailing aimlessly. "Sorry, I don't want to hurt you. I - oh, stop trying to hit me. I can't feel it. Stop that!"

He wrapped his arms, suddenly solidified, around her and she cried out in fear.

"Where am I!? What's happening?!"

"Bolin, I've got her," Korra said, quickly subduing the confused girl in a less frightening bear hug.

"What - how did - what is going on!? " she demanded, struggling against her strong arms. Asami may have been crafty, but when it came to brute strength, Korra had the advantage. Gradually, though, she began to come to her senses. She could see her start to remember everything. "Oh my God!"

"Asami, don't - don't freak out!" Korra tried to say softly as Mako joined them. He was the strongest out of all of them, so he took her from Korra and restrained her. She wished he'd be just a little gentler, but the girl was starting to thrash harder. "Just - just, please, calm down…"

"Calm down!?" she shrieked. "Help! Help! "

"The basement!" Mako said quickly. If it could muffle the sounds of an outraged werewolf, it would quiet her screaming enough. Someone would call the police if she was heard, and there was absolutely no way they could explain any of this away.

Mako clamped a hand over her mouth to stop her shouting. She bit him hard and he howled, pulling his hand away. Bolin used his own corporeal hand to replace it. Asami bit again, but Bolin didn't even flinch.

"Mmmmppphh! Mmmph!"

"I told you, I can't feel it," he said. "Just relax, you have to quiet down!"

The three of them dragged her down into the basement and Bolin slammed the door shut behind them.

Korra pulled on Mako's arms. "Okay, let her - let her go! Stop dragging her around!"

He released his grip, but Asami immediately dove for the stairs. Mako grabbed her again, this time time lifting her up off the floor. She bravely punched at his head, shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Get off me, asshole!"

"Get the cage open!" he ordered his brother. Bolin looked reluctant, but did as he was told, throwing aside the tarp they'd used to cover up Korra's cage. Asami's eyes widened.

"We can't just throw her in there!" Korra protested.

"No choice," Mako said harshly, shoving the kicking and scratching girl inside. He locked the door and fell back, still kind of in shock.

"You can't do this!" Asami shouted angrily. "I don't know what kind of gang-related shit I walked into here, but if you don't let me go - !"

"Asami, calm down - " Korra tried again.

"No! Fuck you !" she cried. "You and him and… and-and-and that guy that's supposed to be dead, what the fuck is going on here?!"

"Ummm - "

"No. No! I don't want to fucking know!" she clamped her hands over her ears. "Just...just let me out, and I won't say a word. I swear, I won't tell anyone anything. I don't care about any of this. I don't fucking care, I just wanted to rent a room!"

"What do we do?" Bolin whispered, as if still afraid of Asami hearing him. He had forgotten how to talk to someone that wasn't her or Mako. "Why can she see me?"

"Until we figure that out, we can't let her go," Mako said firmly.

"What?!" Korra yelped. "What do you mean, you want to keep her prisoner!?"

"We don't know who she is. Who she's working for."

"Working for?!" Asami cried. "What the hell are you even…!?"

"What are you talking about, Mako?" Korra demanded. "We know who she is, just some college girl!"

"Do we really know?" Mako glared at her. "How can she see Bolin? She's not like us, not one of us. Her blood smells like regular human blood, I know you can smell it too."

Asami was staring at all of them now, struck silent and her eyes wide. She couldn't have understood. She didn't have that taint of death Korra could smell on vampires, and she didn't have the smell of werewolf blood that turned away vampires. If anything, Korra could see the familiar look of discomfort in Mako's eyes. She saw it whenever they were together on the street or in large crowds. He wanted to bite her, pretty badly. Asami was very, very much human.

"We don't know what this is," Mako said. "It's not safe to just let her run off. Not with all she knows. She's seen Bolin and knows who he is!"

Korra rounded on him. "So we hold her hostage? Are you insane!?"

"Then what do you propose we do?!" Mako demanded. "Let her loose to tell everyone?! Get us on the news? Let her come back with her people to attack us? What if whoever she's working for - "

"I don't know," Korra said, tugging at her hair in exasperation. "But she's not - God, she's working for anyone, Mako! Why do you keep saying that?!"

He fumbled for words. "I'm...I'm just saying, there has to be a reason she can see Bolin! She can't be a normal human. Normal humans don't see ghosts!"

Korra glared at him suspiciously. He was hiding something again, and something was telling her that it had something to with losing his job. Working at the hospital was the only thing he was ever quiet about with them, it was the only part of his life he kept Bolin and Korra from. There had to be a reason for that.

It bothered her that he refused to open up, even more concerning to her than this girl that could see dead people.

"Mako, who would she be working for?"

"No one! I don't know!" He threw up his hands and averted his eyes from her. "We just have to be careful!"

"Careful about what?"

"You don't think it's a little fishy that she's the only one to answer our ad?"

"I think you're being fishy."

As they stared each other down, Bolin walked up to the cage, where Asami had at some point fallen on her ass. She was gaping at all of them with expression of horror, mixed with disbelief and confusion.

"Sorry about all this," he said to her sheepishly. "You're right, I'm Bolin. That Bolin. Mako's brother. I'm dead. I'm a ghost, or, I don't know, like a spirit or something. Um, Mako's dead too. Kind of. Un dead, really. He's a vampire. And Korra's a werewolf. But like, not right now. She only turns into one of those on full moons."

Korra and Mako's argument fell flat as Bolin spoke, for the first time to someone that wasn't them. At least, to someone that actually could hear him. It was strange to witness another person react to his words.

"Vampire." Asami repeated. "Werewolf."

"Yeah. I...you're the first person in a year that can actually see or hear me since I died, other than these two," Bolin explained. "We thought only supernaturals - vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and whatever else is out there - could see me. Forgive them for freaking out a little."

"A little?! I'm in a cage! " She cautiously climbed to her feet.

"Yeah, I know. This isn't our greatest moment," he looked over at us. "I say they let her out."

"No," Mako said firmly.

"Mako!" Korra refused to be as big a dick about all this as he was, but at the same time she did see his point. If she was wrong and Mako was right, they could possibly be in danger. Also, he would never let her hear the end of it.

Still, they couldn't just imprison Asami forever. She was a person, and Korra got absolutely no bad vibes from her to indicate she was lying or hiding anything. She just seemed like a scared and pissed off girl that did not mean to get this in over her head.

Asami bit her lip uncertainly. It seemed she had decided to be more comfortable with Bolin then the rest of them.

"You're...you really got murdered? You're really that guy?"

Bolin nodded. "Yeah, I'm that guy. Or just the ghost of that guy. I'm not sure if there's a difference. It doesn't feel like there is, I still feel like me, but evidence has proven otherwise."

He reached out and swiped a hand clean through the bars of the cage. Asami gasped, stumbling back a little.

"Sorry, I know it's weird."

She shook her head, as if trying to shake the memory out of her brain. "I don't know how you people have me halfway believing this shit, but…God, how did you do that?!"

"Um, I just did it? It's actually harder to not do that." Bolin demonstrated by solidifying his hand and grasping the same bar she was clutching. "Doing this actually expends more energy. Way more. Like, one time I held onto my XBox controller for so long I passed out. At least, I thought I passed out. According to these guys I actually kind of...ceased to exist for a couple hours. Completely disappeared, with no memory of what happened."

Korra bit her lip. She hated thinking about that night. He'd been gone for seven hours, and she and Mako had turned the entire house inside out looking for him. It was the middle of the night and she'd stayed up the entire time until dawn, when he'd reappeared exactly where he had been - in front of the TV. Bolin only remembered feeling very faint. They still had no idea where he'd gone, but forbid him from doing it ever again.

"I always come back, though. The universe won't let me move on. Hence...ghost."

For whatever reason, this seemed to resonate the most with Asami. If only for just a moment, she seemed contemplative. Almost content, as if none of this was actually possible, until Bolin told her about that.

Korra had to give the girl credit, despite everything, Asami seemed to be taking this whole thing a lot better than anyone could be expected to. She still remembered her moment, the moment the world as she knew it ended for her. Years ago, not long after she was first bitten but before her first change, she'd met her first ghost. It was an old man, well-dressed in old fashioned garb that hinted he'd died some time in the 70s. He was her first acquaintance in the supernatural world, though she definitely couldn't have called him a friend. He babbled and raved gibberish, and Korra thought perhaps he was lost, or worse, homeless. But when she tried to touch him, her hands went straight through, and that was when she realized nothing was at all what she thought.

Ghosts were real - harmless and depressing, but very real beings that no one else could see. The angrier spirits she was seeing seemed to sense her fear and tormented her, followed her and howled, pretending to grab her even though none of them really could. Korra could also smell death's touch on some people who were definitely alive and not spirits, but Mako would soon teach her that those were vampires. Actual, real undead creatures that drank blood and killed people to survive. The vampires could sense she was a werewolf as well, though they mostly kept her distance. Having unappetizing werewolf blood kept her safe, but she knew that this was reality, not a creepy urban fantasy. All her life she was surrounded by so-called "evil creatures" of myth and she'd never known. It was all overwhelmingly maddening.

"I'm...sorry," Asami said finally.

Mako's nostrils flared angrily his eyes flashed red. He was going into "vamp mode" as Bolin called it.

"He doesn't need your pity ," He snarled, baring his teeth at her as his fangs descended. That scared her all over again. She jumped back, into what Korra recognized as an impressive martial arts defense stance.

"Hey!" Korra made a point to push him away, to show her that he was all show and wouldn't actually hurt her. His tough guy act was completely unnecessary. "He's just really protective of his brother. Forgive him for being fucking rude ."

She turned and pushed at him again. "Put your face away, asshole."

"We can't let her go. Bo just put all our shit on blast!"

"I feel like having your hand go through him earlier kind of gave us away first, dumbass."

"I knew this was a bad idea. We should've never tried this!"

"Shut up, Mako," Bolin said. He looked at Asami apologetically. "My brother was with me when I was attacked. I was killed by a group of vampires. That's how I was murdered, but they didn't kill him. They turned him into one of them ."

Asami barely looked like she was listening, instead keeping her eyes focused on Mako, who was glaring right back at her with blood-red pupils.

"He doesn't hurt humans, though," Bolin continued, helping Korra push his brother backward. "Right, Mako? You don't hurt humans."

Sometimes when Mako went into "vamp mode" like this, it was harder for him to control his temper. Regular Mako wouldn't hurt a fly - he was a vegetarian for God's sake - but once he got his fangs out, he had a harder time keeping his cool.

"It's been hard for all three of us. So, just please, understand our...aggressive overreaction here. Also, Korra owes the Swear Jar two yuans and Mako owes it one."

"This is not the time for that shit, Bo."

"Two yuans."

Korra frowned. "I thought we decided 'ass' wasn't a swear? We say it too much."

"Ass counts, if only just to stop us from saying it so much. Why do we say it so much?"

"We have an ass problem."

"Maybe you guys have an ass problem. Mine is fantastic, thank you very much."

"Oh my God, you guys, we're going to need another jar."

Asami suddenly cleared her throat.

"And what can you do?"

They all turned to her, startled. Did she seriously just ask them a question as if she were genuinely curious about the insanity of their lives?

"Uh. Huh?" Korra asked eloquently.

"What can you do?" Asami repeated cautiously. "You...turn into a wolf?"

"Uh, not on command," she shrugged nervously. "I can't show you, but that's probably for the best. That cage you're in is actually mine. They lock me up in there every full moon so I don't go running around Republic City eating people."

Asami looked alarmed.

"No, I make them do it!" Korra said quickly. "That's only once a month. I have no control over it, and I'm not conscious of it when I'm changed. Otherwise I'm just me… I mean, I have a really good sense of smell? Like, I know you had chicken fajitas for lunch, with some horchata. From Tu Casa, right? I love that place. And you drink a lot of coffee. I don't, but Mako does, even though it doesn't really serve a purpose for him. He just likes the taste, and I guess caffeine addiction transcends death, huh?"

Korra was babbling, she could hear herself. But this afternoon was becoming a lot more than she had thought it would be. When she couldn't do anything, she said anything.

"Uh, I was bitten by a werewolf freshman year. A couple months before I met Mako, actually. Um, that's a long story."

"I didn't know she was a werewolf," Mako felt the need to add.

"No. And he wasn't a vampire at the time, either."

"Apparently being a werewolf made her feel like she was a danger or something to me, so she broke up with me."

"That's not the only reason - but this is, uh, may be a little too much information for one time," Korra rubbed the back of her neck anxiously. "You know, you can tell me to shut up any time. Why are you people letting me talk?"

Bolin grinned at Asami. "Imagine living with these two. Or, well, I guess you were, for a little while there."

Asami made a weird, incredulous, sardonic "Psh" noise.

"Also, for the record, she's the one into Duran Duran, not me. Hungry Like The Wolf, get it?"

"I like the one song!" Korra said heatedly. "And I only like it ironically!"

"But you see, the reason they freaked out is because no one can know about us. The human world wouldn't be able to handle us. We have to stay a secret."

"So you put out an ad for a roommate on Craigslist!? " she squawked.

"Not my idea," Mako said unhelpfully.

"We needed the money," Korra explained sheepishly, although it was all starting to feel more than a little stupid now. "Bolin has been trapped in this house since the murder. We don't know why or how, but we need to stay here with him until we figure it out. We can't abandon him. But a nice house like this, in this neighborhood? It was only a matter of time before money became an issue."

Asami stared at the three of them for a moment, unbelieving, before turning just to Bolin.

"Look," she said gently. "Just let me out. Let me go home, and I'll leave you guys alone. I won't tell anyone about...whatever is going on here."

"There's nothing going on here," he insisted. "We're just a regular vampire, werewolf, and ghost living together in this house, trying to be normal. That's all."

"Normal? Do you even know what that word means? "

"No," Bolin admitted. "Do you?"

Asami opened her mouth and sputtered, but no actual words came out. Korra didn't know what she was thinking, but her guess was that her life wasn't all that "normal" either.

"That's what I thought. Maybe we're...different. But they're my family and nothing is more normal and human than family. We'd do anything for each other. And we'd do anything to protect each other from people who try to come after us."

He said it in a friendly tone, Bolin didn't have any other kind of tone really, but it was clearly a threat. Mako and Korra shared a look upon hearing it. They didn't even know Bolin was capable of such a thing.

"What are you people even afraid of?" Asami demanded, pointing at each one of us. " You have fangs. You are literally untouchable. And you can turn into a wolf and...eat people or whatever! Why are you scared?!"

Mako's eyes hardened. "Humans are plenty dangerous. There are a lot more of you than there are of us. And you attack what you don't understand."

"What about me? I'm a human that can see ghosts, apparently. I'm something you 'don't understand'." She waved her hands around at the cage they'd locked her in. "What do you call what you're doing to me? "

Korra frowned and nodded. She had a point, they were attacking her. It was admirable, really, how level-headed she was being. They had basically revealed to Asami that all her wildest fears were true. Three living nightmares had just locked her in a cage in their basement. But instead of cowering in the farthest corner and wetting herself, she had gotten to her feet and clutched the steel bars that separated her from them. She wasn't backing down. In fact, she'd pinpointed their exact weakness and she was playing it.

Their humanity. Or whatever was left of it.

"She's got you there, bro," Bolin said, elbowing him.

"I'm not coming after you. And I'm not working for anyone." She cast a glance at Mako, who was still in full vamp mode. "I don't know why I can see you, Bolin, but I don't want to hurt any of you. And I especially don't want you people to hurt me. I just want to go home. Please."

They looked at her for a very long time.

"We let her go," Bolin said, going over to the cage.

"What?!" Mako demanded. "We can't just - Korra, come on, talk to him!"

He was depending on her to make the decision. Bolin was sweet, but often overly naive when it came to people. He trusted everyone. His brother was the complete opposite, seeing an enemy in anyone that so much as looked at them funny. Unfortunately, Korra wouldn't really call herself a middle-of-the-road tiebreaker. On the contrary, Korra was usually quick to fight and brash with her decisions, which put her much more in line with Mako.

But this wasn't a fight. This was a human girl who just had her mind blown and wanted to go home. It wasn't that she didn't bother Korra. There was something too strange about her ability to see Bolin, whether she was clueless about it or not. And there was a small part of her that did want to keep an eye on her, in case something about this weird "talent" spelled anything sinister for them.

That didn't mean they could keep her captive in our basement, though.

"Let's just send her home. We can't keep her here."

Bolin smiled at her appreciatively and undid the lock. He held out a hand to help Asami out, but she kept her arms hugging tightly to herself.

"But what is she? There's something wrong with her!" Mako protested, but made no move to grab her again.

"We're sorry," Korra said sincerely. "Really, we're sorry. I hope you can understand."

Asami said nothing.

"We're...really protective of each other. You frightened us. We believe you when you say you don't want to harm us - "

Mako snorted.

"I believe you," Korra amended, glaring at him,

"Me too!" Bolin added.

She took a deep breath. "I'm going. This is the last you're going to see or hear of me. Okay?

Bolin and Korra nodded. Mako just glowered.

"Don't come back," he snarled.

Asami backed away, not taking her eyes off of them until she reached the stairs. Then, she turned and bolted. They didn't follow, instead just listening to her rushed sprinting above their heads. When they finally came up from the basement, her car was gone.

"Did all that just happen?" Korra sighed.

"Yeah," Bolin said. "But you heard her. That's the last we're going to - "

"I'm going out," Mako said gruffly, snatching his sunglasses off the coffee table and wrapping his scarf around his neck.

"Where are you going?"

"The mall."

He stalked out the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Korra and Bolin looked at each other.

"He's not going to the mall."

"Nope." Bolin shook his head. "You have to go after him."

"Yep."

"Don't forget your helmet!"

"Yep."

Korra ran out the door. She hopped on her bike and began to pedal. In any under circumstance, it would have been ridiculous to tail a pair of cars on a bicycle, but it was just at the beginning of rush hour. She could still see Mako's car making a right turn ahead, despite having had a head start.

"Damn it, Mako," Korra grumbled. Her bruised ribs immediately began to heat up and she clutched at them with one hand. "Pain in the ass."

The traffic on Main Street was absurd, so Korra was able to roll up onto the sidewalk. It wasn't long before she was side-by-side with Mako's old, lumbering Satomobile.

"Mako!" she shouted, banging on the passenger side window. "Mako, open up!"

He gaped at her and rolled down the window.

"Are you insane?!"

"Are you!? "

He slowed the car even more. "Damn it, Korra. Throw your bike in the back."

The traffic was bad enough that she was able to get off the bike and walk by the car's side, but she was having trouble shoving it in the back seat, with her rib injury. Mako groaned and put the car in park. The cars behind him honked their horns angrily and he boldly gave each and every one of them the finger as they passed.

He forced the bike into the backseat and they both climbed back into the car.

"Bolin sent me to stop you," Korra said.

"Okay, but first let me just say that I know that girl isn't sitting right with you, either. You want to believe that she's just some innocent but there's a part of you that's afraid of what her ability to see Bolin means. You're worried about how this might affect our safety, and you want to know a little bit more about her before you'll be able to sleep well at night."

She bit her lip. He wasn't entirely wrong. Not at all, actually.

"Oh, shut up and drive."

Mako smirked and shifted gears.

* * *

 _ **Author's Note**_

* * *

I wrote a couple chapters ahead already, all in first person. It's been kind of a struggle catching all my pronouns while transitioning all of it into third person, so I apologize for the bits of first person left in the previous chapters. Thanks for pointing them out! I really hope I got them all, or at least most of them.


	4. Air Temple Espresso

**_CHAPTER FOUR - Air Temple Espresso_**

* * *

"Ooooh, she has an XBox?" Bolin gushed. "Did you get her gamertag?"

Mako and Korra glared at him.

"What? Look, she's fine," he reasoned. "It's been three days and we don't have people with torches and pitchforks knocking down our door. She didn't tell anyone. Why couldn't I play XBox with her?"

"It's still all really sketchy," Mako insisted stubbornly.

"Oh, yeah, says one of the creepers who's been stalking her since Monday."

Mako looked to Korra for support, but she shook her head.

"He does have a point there."

"You always take his side!"

" _You_ need to lighten up!" she accused. "Asami isn't going to say anything. I don't think we need to follow her around anymore. If campus security catches me hiding behind the dumpsters at the student union again, I don't think the 'I accidentally threw out my retainer' excuse is gonna fly again."

Korra could only imagine what she looked like to security, a student hiding in trees and crawling around in the bushes with a pair of binoculars. Mako was lucky, he didn't show up on cameras, but he would have been so busted if he was caught on campus grounds without a student or faculty ID.

"The _minute_ we look away, she's going to - "

"She's going to what? Get an A in her thermodynamics class and solve the energy crisis?"

Asami was fascinating. Three days of secretly following her around on campus had confirmed this. She was definitely a loner. Every morning she woke up early and checked her phone for the weather, read some news headlines, and fiddled with a few engineering and design apps. The girl was addicted to her phone, but never called anyone, barely texted. She was disciplined, always working out at the gym before heading off to class. She was a nerd, spending her late nights on her XBox or watching weird cartoons in her dorm room. She was gorgeous, a fact not lost on her lab partners, who seemed to be in constant competition making passes at her. Not that she noticed, anyway. All Asami seemed to care about was building whatever that contraption was they were working on in the engineering shop and doing dizzyingly complicated math on whatever surface she could write on.

Because above all else, Asami was a genius. She had a large whiteboard in her private dorm room, littered with blueprints, equations, and other hopelessly complicated scribbles. There was a literal stack of academic certificates, awards, and medals on her desk. She lived for her studies and her work and nothing else.

She would have been the _perfect_ freaking roommate.

"A week," Mako insisted. "Let's just finish the week, to make sure. Okay?"

On the very rare occasion she actually left university grounds, Mako would tail her from his car. He didn't get many chances though, since they figured she was still a little spooked by their encounter and wanted to stay safe and sound on campus. There, Korra was her shadow.

But not anymore. She sighed and grabbed her books.

"I'm going to my physiology class, and then straight to work after that. See you boys tonight."

"Korra - "

"We're leaving her alone," she said sternly. "Bolin, don't let him come to campus."

"Got it." He saluted me. "Although if you do happen upon her gamertag - "

She shut the door behind her and headed for the subway station. Straight to class, straight to work, and straight home. That was the plan. It was her usual plan anyway, since they all tried to live as inconspicuously as possible. Other than her coworkers at the coffee shop, who were annoyingly noisy but very sweet, she couldn't even really say she had any friends to hang with between or after classes. She was a lot like Asami, in that way.

Still, Korra really was determined never to see that girl again.

Really.

So when she tripped over a loose cobblestone while running for the downtown bus from the lecture hall and suddenly found a familiar pair of honeyed-green eyes looking down at her, it was honestly an accident.

 _Honestly._

"Are...you okay? That was some spill."

"I, uh…"

Asami reached out an elegant but strong hand and pulled her up.

"You weren't in the dumpster with your binoculars this morning," she said, casually chuckling, but there was an audible tinge of anxiety there. "I was starting to feel a bit abandoned."

Korra promptly felt herself start to sweat. "I - uh - you - um - I…?"

Asami let her stutter a few seconds more, her expression blank as she idly wrapped her hands around the straps of her backpack. Her nails were painted bright red, and Korra couldn't help but notice the first two nails on her right hand were chipped. That was probably from all the time she spent in the lab working. She seemed like such the classy type, with red-painted lips, green-tinted eyelids, and expertly lined mascara. Not to mention the hair, which didn't seem to grow out of her head so much as freaking _cascade_ across her shoulders. Korra wasn't just being embarrassingly enthralled at how attractive she was, she was making a legitimate observation - Asami was a fancy girl living a decidedly mismatched un-fancy life, for some reason, and that was strange.

Not that she was in any position to make any judgements. Korra was basically a stalker-kidnapper.

"You knew...?"

"Knew what? That you've been spying on me around the university since that day at your house? Or that Mako doesn't realize following someone in their car with the headlights off at night is about ten times more conspicuous than if they were on?"

Asami was being weirdly calm about it all. Not angry or afraid or any other kind of emotion Korra felt like a regular person should have felt. Although what did she know, she hadn't been a regular person for a while, and she hadn't exactly been in this kind of situation before. She wasn't sure how anyone was supposed to respond to this, really.

"Um. Sorry."

"Well, I suppose I appreciate the apology."

"You didn't, I don't know, call the police or whatever?"

She rolled her eyes. "You know I didn't. Can you imagine? Excuse me, officer, I'd like to file a report for attempted kidnapping. I walked clear through this one guy like he was made of air and the other one can just spontaneously grow fangs. No, I'm not drunk, I met them on Craigslist."

Korra cringed. "Sorry."

"Right."

"You still could have, I don't know, reported Mako and I stalking you? They would have believed _that._ "

She hesitated. "I almost did, when I saw you and Mako in the parking lot by my dorm that day. But you two seemed to be fighting in the car, and I couldn't help but watch you for a moment."

Mako had wanted to capture her again. Korra smacked him in the head and he had calmed down a little, instead suggesting they leave a threatening note with drops of dried blood splattered on it for effect. Of course she had to hit him again, because that was such a stupid, vampire-y thing to even think of, and he finally agreed to some simple reconnaissance. If Asami looked like she was about to ruin their lives, they'd take action, but not until then.

"Then you two sort of just sat there grumpily," Asami continued. "You honestly looked a bit silly. It was like watching little kids fight over a brownie and then pout when mom just takes it away."

Indeed, that just about summed the Korra-Mako relationship.

"From what I...saw...that day, I know that you could have easily just taken me back. Or even possibly...killed me, if you wanted. But you didn't. I decided then that maybe you're not the _worst_ people ever."

"We try not to be." Korra rubbed her neck sheepishly. "Some days are better than others. Especially for Mako, it's harder for him because of...what he is."

She nodded thoughtfully. "But he listens to you."

"Yeah, and his brother. The...uh, the ghost."

"Er, yes. Right."

"I should thank you. For keeping our secret."

Asami frowned. "Honestly, it's not something I feel like I could just tell people. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm an engineer. A scientist."

Korra kept a straight face. "I did notice, yes."

"None of it makes any sense. I don't even think I'm really scared of you people. Maybe if either of you actually tried to hurt me, I would have tried something more, or actually been afraid. But right now I just feel...unsettled. There's something in the universe that science apparently hasn't explained yet, and it bothers me."

Korra couldn't help but grin at that.

"So...you're not calling the cops on us because... _science?_ "

She smirked. "You locked me in a cage, do you really think you get to call me a nerd right now?"

"Okay, okay, sorry."

"Anyway, you let me go." She shrugged. "When I realized all you were doing was watching me, not trying to hurt me, I figured you'd stop after a while. Letting you watch me be boring was a lot easier than trying to fight a bunch of mythological creatures, you know?"

"I guess."

"It kind of makes it seem like you all were more afraid of me than I was of you."

She wasn't wrong. For all their supernatural powers, it was human beings that scared them the most.

"Mako, Bolin, and I look after each other. Whatever it takes. But none of us wanted to drag you into this, just like none of us wanted to be dragged in ourselves."

"So you put an ad on Craigslist for a roommate in your haunted house?" She shook her head. "That was a really stupid plan."

"Don't I know it. But what choice did we have?"

Asami actually looked sad. "Yeah, I remember. Bolin and the house."

Korra took a quick peek at her phone screen. "Speaking of the stupidly expensive house, I really need to get to work and I think I'm about to miss the bus."

"Can't wolves run something like 35 miles per hour?"

"You know what, I actually think that might be racist!"

Asami grinned, actually grinned despite everything. "Excuse my werewolf ignorance."

" _Shh!"_ Korra hissed, looking around to make sure no one had heard. Classes had just let out and the quad was full of students. Asami looked mildly apologetic.

"Oh, sorry. I guess I was kind of loud."

"It doesn't work like that," Korra said softly, continuing to glance around them. "When I'm me, like I am now, I'm just me. Not like Mako or Bolin. Right now, I'm not special. I'm a little stronger, because I train so much with my excess energy, and I have that super-strong sense of smell I think I told you about. Oh, and I guess I eat a lot. That's all."

Asami nodded. "So you really are just a student. You weren't lying."

"So far the only lie I ever really told you was that only two people live in my house," Korra said. "Technically, it's three. Although if you're being super technical, I guess you can argue only one of us is 'living' there, huh?"

"And you have a job?"

"Best barista in Republic city," Korra bragged. "At Air Temple Espresso, downtown."

She looked at her blankly.

"Home of Republic City's famous fruit pies?"

More blank staring.

"We have a big stuffed sky bison out front sitting on a bench that kids take selfies with."

"Oh! Right, next to the gas station and mini mart." Asami rocked back and forth on her heels for a moment. "So...you're just a person."

"I try to be like a person, yeah," she said earnestly. "We all try, really hard."

Asami seemed to be thinking about something. "Right. You know, my car does need some gas."

"Huh?"

"I need to get gas. And I've never tried your famous fruit pies before."

Korra didn't know what this was. Asami was the absolute last person on earth who should want to hang out with her, the last person to even be talking to her. Yet here she was, more or less unafraid. It made no sense.

There was a kindness in those pretty eyes of hers, though. Beyond all reason, she could tell that this girl felt sad for her. For all of them, probably. Asami pitied them, which was an entirely new thing for her. Normally, Korra would resent feeling pitied, but in this case, well, she'd take it. She'd take anything over being feared and hated. In a way, she felt like Asami reaching out with her pity was almost like being forgiven for everything they'd done.

"I suppose I do owe you like, all the fruit pies in the world."

"For the cage thing."

Korra winced again. "Yeah, for the cage thing."

"And for the ride I'm about to give you to work."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You're seriously not even a _little_ afraid of me?"

"You said it yourself, you're nothing special at the moment." Asami smiled at her. Actually smiled, which nearly dazzled Korra right back on her ass.

"I'm not, and Mako or Bolin would never hurt you either. But still...are you really okay with hanging around me?" she asked her cautiously.

"Thinking rather highly of yourself, aren't you?" Asami said flippantly. She started to walk past. "I'm not trying to hang. I'm just a nice person that saw someone fall over, and thought maybe she could use a break."

Several feet ahead of her now, she still didn't look back. Korra faltered.

"Aw, hell," she mumbled, chasing after her. "Thank you, Asami."

"It's no problem - hang on." She stopped suddenly and looked out over the parking lot. Then she waved at someone. Korra blushed furiously.

"Oh, my God, I told him to stay home!" She stomped over to Mako's car, which was parked illegally behind some freshly trimmed hedges. Inside, he cowered under her fuming. "Mako! Mako, you get out here!"

"Korra - !?"

She yanked open his door and dragged him out by his stupid red scarf.

"I told you we were leaving her alone!"

"She can hear you!" he hissed.

"She knew the whole time, you idiot."

Asami smiled awkwardly. "Hello. Sorry I had you follow me all the way to that lingerie store yesterday. I didn't think you'd actually go inside with me, and I swear I didn't think you'd scare all those ladies into beating you with their purses."

"Bullshit. You told the manager I was a pervert trying to creep on you in the dressing room!"

Korra turned back to Asami, impressed.

"Okay, yes, but I didn't think they'd hit you!" She paused. "And anyway, _you put me in a cage!"_

Mako looked to Korra for help, but she shook her head.

"She officially gets to play that card for the rest of her life."

He frowned. "Whatever. Come on, I'll drive you to work."

"My offer still stands, but it's fine if you want to go with him," Asami said. Mako's eyes widened.

"You were gonna go with her?! You can't go with her, she's basically a stranger!"

"I don't think the people who've watched my every move for three days can call me a stranger," Asami mused.

Korra snorted. "She's right, Mako. I'll see you tonight, just like how we discussed. You know, this morning, when I told you we weren't doing this anymore? When you decided not to listen and come here anyway?"

"Korra, you can't be serious."

"Later, Mako."

She turned away and followed Asami to her hot red vintage sports car.

"He's probably going to follow us, anyway, isn't he?"

"He can do whatever he wants, he's made that much clear," Korra huffed.

"Is it weird that I kind of admire his dedication?"

"Yes."

"Korra!"

Opal, her co-barista, waved from behind the bar. She was a student at Avatar University as well, a sophomore international relations major.

"Hey, Opal. Um, this is Asami."

They shook hands, the young barista looking entirely too excited.

"Nice to meet you, Asami. Gosh, Korra never brings any friends in. I was sure she didn't have any!"

She lightly shoved her and cleared her throat to gloss over that awkward conversation.

"She gave me a ride from school."

"Yeah, I was about to text you! I saw your bus at the corner but you didn't get off. I thought you might have fallen asleep and missed your stop again."

Asami snickered. "Has she done that before?"

"Three times. Once she ended up in Dragon Flats and some guy tried to - "

"Okay!" Korra yelped. " _Anyway_ , here I am, let's get to work. Can you get Asami a fruit pie? I owe her."

Opal nodded. "Today we've got peach, pineapple, and mixed berry."

"Mixed berry sounds lovely, thank you."

"Have a seat wherever you like, Korra will bring it out to you once I have it ready. How do you like your coffee?"

"Oh, you don't have to - "

"I'll make her a cortado," Korra said, pulling on her yellow and orange apron. Asami looked surprised and she felt a twinge of pride at having guessed her usual drink.

Opal nodded over to the armchair by the window. "That's the best seat in the house. Better grab it while it's open. The after-school rush is about to start."

Asami obediently settled into the seat and pulled a textbook out of her bag. Opal kicked Korra under the bar.

"She's cute."

"Shut up."

"She's really cute."

"Shut. Up."

She just grinned at me. "So, how'd you guys meet?"

"We...uh...school."

Opal poked her. "We've worked together for years and you're still so secretive. What's the big deal, is she like a dealer or something?"

"No she's not a - God, we met three days ago! I was kind of a dick to her and I'm just trying to make up for it, okay!?"

"Kind of a dick how?"

"It's a really long story," Korra mumbled, topping off the cortado with a thin layer of foam. Opal slid a plate over to her and dropped a fruit pie on it.

"Your whole life is a really long story," she said. "Someday I'd like to hear it."

"Some day," Korra echoed non-committedly. She took the plate and gently bumped her shoulder in gratitude before taking everything over to Asami.

"Thank you," she said, her eyes still lowered on her book. "I suppose you know my drink because you've watched me order it twice a day for three days?"

"No, I don't have like, super-vision," Korra said sheepishly. "I smelled it on your breath, though."

Asami blinked. "Oh. Right."

"You sure I don't freak you out?"

It took her a moment to answer.

"You? No. Casper the friendly ghost? No. Mako? A little bit, maybe. He's so...vigilant. But I've seen how he acts around you."

She had to smile at that.

"Mako won't touch you."

"I see his car at the far corner of the parking lot right now."

"Yes, well, we both expected that."

"Is he really just going to sit in his car like that until I leave?"

Korra cocked her head. "Probably. I do share some of his concerns though, not gonna lie."

"Like how I can see ghosts, apparently?"

" You mean _Bolin,"_ Korra lowered her voice even more and hoped she would follow suit, if she was going to go blabbing words like 'ghost' and 'werewolf'. "But yeah, it would be nice to know. Normally only people like us can see him. You know, people like…"

"Southern Water Tribe," Asami supplied.

"Right...uh, yeah."

"How long have you been...Southern Water Tribe?"

"About three years now, I think. It happened freshman year of college."

"And Mako? How long has he been... _Fire Nation?_ "

Our secret code was already unraveling.

"Just a year. Same as Bolin being...Earth Kingdom. He told you about that."

"So...an SWT, Fire National, and an...Earther? All living together in one house?"

It sounded kind of silly when she put it that way. Although, Korra supposed it was no sillier than saying it properly - a vampire, ghost, and werewolf living together in a house.

"Oh yeah, we're super progressive."

"And you thought a United Republic girl in the mix was a good idea?"

"I don't think we need a code word for 'human', do we?" Korra paused thoughtfully. "Okay, maybe in this context we should."

"What if - _whoa!_ "

Her mouth dropped open and Korra followed her line of sight out the window. In the parking lot, a strong-looking older guy with long black hair and a mustache was leaning into Mako's open car window. Behind the stranger was an extremely thin woman, about the same age, with darker skin and longer, stringier hair. When she moved, Korra realized she wasn't just super-skinny, she actually didn't have any arms.

Mako looked angry, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. They didn't seem to be strangers to him at all. In fact, he was rolling his eyes at them. He started the car and pushed the guy's head out the window so he could roll it up. Then, things went nuts.

The guy grabbed Mako by the front of his leather jacket and dragged him right out of the open window of his car, throwing him down onto the asphalt.

" _Shit!"_ Korra threw off her apron and sprinted outside, startling both Asami and Opal at the counter.

"You think you can fucking mess with Zaheer?" the man was saying, as Mako struggled to pick himself up off the ground.

The armless woman slammed her heavy boot down on Mako's back. Korra heard the rush of air escaping his lungs. "You think you can get away with this shit?"

"Hey, _hey!_ " She shouted, running towards them. "What is this?! Leave him alone!"

The man looked up in surprise and sneered at her.

"You called in your guard dog to save you?"

"Leave her alone, Ghazan," Mako coughed. The woman viciously kicked him in the face, and Korra watched blood splash across the pavement.

She threw herself at her, tackling her to the ground. The armless woman just laughed, cackled at Korra as she squirmed out of her grasp like a snake. For a second she felt bad for knocking over a disabled woman. Just for a second, until her stupid steel-toed boot connected with her cheekbone and had her seeing stars.

"Stay out of this, little pup!" she said gleefully. It was then that Korra caught her scent.

These were vampires. And they knew what she was.

Mako growled in anger and jumped to his feet, trying to grab the woman, but the man called Ghazan snaked an arm around his neck.

" _I'm calling the cops!"_

They all looked over at the entrance to Air Temple Espresso. A small crowd had gathered, mostly behind the glass windows of the shop, but Asami stood at the curb, her cell phone held high. Ghazan hesitated.

"We're not done with you," he grumbled at Mako, roughly pushing him away so that he sprawled onto the front of the car. Blood streamed from his nose, dripping down the hood.

"Fuck you," Mako spat. "You heard her, she's calling the cops. If they get involved…"

"Let's go, Ming-Hua," Ghazan put a hand on her back, guiding her away from where she looked to be preparing for another kick. "He got the message, and now so did his bitch."

Instead of getting into a another car, they simply strode off into the forest lining the parking lot, as if they had no care in the world. Korra coughed and Mako knelt beside her.

"Are you okay?"

"Dude, your nose blood just dripped into my mouth," she gagged.

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you should be, that's the grossest thing that's ever happened to me."

"Not for _that_ you - "

They heard footsteps start rushing towards them. Asami was suddenly by their side, her cell phone still out. Behind her, Opal was holding an espresso portafilter over her head like a weapon.

"I could call the cops," Asami said quietly.

"Of course you should call the cops! Why shouldn't you call the cops!?" Opal yelped, scanning the trees in case Ghazan and Ming-Hua decided to come back asking for a portafilter to the teeth.

Mako looked hard at Asami before responding. "It's okay. You don't have to call anyone."

"What?!" Opal stared at him. "You're both bleeding all over the place. Mako, your nose is broke to all hell and Korra, the entire right side of your face is like, quadrupled in size!"

Korra was watching Asami as well. She met her gaze and Korra realized that she knew. She knew that this was something that involved...people like them, and that maybe it would be better not to involve the authorities. She was asking for permission first.

"It was a dumb little fight," Mako grunted. "He thinks I owe his friend some money. I don't, but he likes playing thug."

She glared at him. There was more to this, and he knew she wasn't stupid. She'd accept this answer with Asami and Opal there, but that night they were getting answers.

Opal studied Korra. She had known Mako from back when they were dating, and when they broke up she had loyally taken her side and hated him for her sake. When they moved in together she thought it was the weirdest thing, but tried to be civil with him even though she still assumed he wronged Korra in some way. Korra could tell what she was thinking, that even as a roommate Mako was still being a bad influence.

"We'll be fine," she reassured her.

"Okay, but you can't work the bar with your face like this," Opal said. "I'm going to get you some ice, but you're going home."

Mako had the nerve to look a little pleased that Korra had to go home with him instead of being with Asami in the coffee shop. She scowled at him.

"You have some explaining to do, Mako."

That wiped that smirk off his face. He quietly trudged back to his car and plopped back into the driver's seat.

"Sorry, Opal. I know it'll be busy this evening. Want me to work for you this Saturday?"

She sighed. "You better, jerk. Now go home. Stay safe. Don't get mixed up in whatever bullshit Mako has gotten himself into."

"He'd never hurt me."

"Maybe not. But those other fools might."

Korra turned to Asami and looked at her apologetically.

"I feel like I've spent this entire afternoon apologizing to you."

She smiled tentatively. "Um, see you around school?"

"See you."

Korra got in the car and stared stonily ahead as Mako drove out of the lot.

"Just gonna cold shoulder me until we get home, huh?"

The answer was yes, but she didn't say it.


	5. Infrastructure

_**CHAPTER FIVE - Infrastructure**_

* * *

Korra and Bolin narrowed their eyes at Mako, arms sternly crossed as they stood over him. He cowered on the couch, fidgeting nervously with his fingers tugging at loose threads in the cushions.

"Soooo…they're the reason I left my job at the hospital," Mako admitted.

"Ghazan and Ming-Hua," Korra recalled the names of the vampire couple that thoroughly handed their asses to them in a public parking lot. "You've mentioned them before. Them and that guy Zaheer."

"You said they were your friends," Bolin accused.

"They were. I mean, they told me early on that they were vampires," he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Zaheer took me under his wing, kind of. Even when I told them I wasn't going to be...killing. That I'd never do it again. He didn't care, he just continued to help me out, even if the other two more or less kept their distance after that."

Korra frowned. "Is he a normal vampire? Does he kill?"

Mako sighed. "Yes."

"So how did he 'take you under his wing', then?"

The long pause to this question made all of them nervous.

 _"Bro,"_ Bolin prompted impatiently.

"Vampires have been around for a really, really long time," Mako began reluctantly. "Like, really long. And we're technically immortal. We're so long-lived that...I mean, they've developed a system. They have an infrastructure in place. They keep a certain order. Like…"

"What, like some kind of underground society?" Korra scoffed. She didn't like how he was saying "we", although that might have only been because she didn't like the idea of Mako being in a "we" that didn't involve Bolin and herself.

"It goes deeper than that, Korra. Way deeper. It - " He closed his eyes. "I wanted to keep this from you guys. You don't need to worry about crazy stuff like this."

"Is there something to be worried about?" she asked, alarmed.

"No! Not really." Mako looked at his brother. "Not for you guys."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bolin asked skeptically.

"Mako, please," Korra pleaded. "Tell us what's going on."

He looked vastly uncomfortable, like he wanted the couch to just swallow him whole into the cushions.

"Vampires have infiltrated society. Like, deeply integrated themselves, and it's been that way for centuries. The degree varies, but here in Republic City…" he hesitated.

"Please do not tell me they secretly run the place." She was only joking, but felt a sinking feeling in her stomach when Mako refused to look up.

"None of the elected officials are vampires, no. But of the 50 or so people on the board of the Avatar University Hospital System, there are 5 vampires. The city's head medical examiner is one, too. And a few of the police, including the chief. They also have a law firm that's entirely vampires - Red Lotus LLP."

Bolin's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?! That's _practically_ running the place!"

Mako shook his head. "No one in actual positions of power in government."

"The hospital board?! Medical examiner, the police chief, and a law firm!?" Korra repeated incredulously. "Those aren't positions of power to you!?"

"I mean, it's just the Avatar hospitals. The Republic City General hospitals don't have - "

"Over half the city goes to Avatar Hospitals, though!" Korra cried. "The medical and nursing school sends their students there! _I_ have labs there!"

"Vampires aren't interested in ruling the world, you guys. They just want to live."

"So any kind of vampire-related crime or...murder…" she realized in horror. "You can just cover it up. That's why they're in hospitals and law enforcement. Something bad happens, someone dies, you can cover it up!"

 _Fuck._ This was beyond conspiracy theories. This was already set in stone. Korra couldn't even consider it just a threat anymore, vampires had been pulling strings all over the city and who knew where else for _centuries_. How many times, how many deaths over the course of - of _human history_ were thanks to vampires that got away with it, just so they could do it again?

"Is she wrong?" Bolin asked quietly. "Mako, is she wrong?"

He gave him a pained look. "You don't understand. You don't understand what it's like to be _this_. To have to fight this every damn day."

Korra bristled. "You do it, though. You do it! Those other vampires are just - they're _killing!"_

"Not necessarily!" Mako interjected. "You don't have to kill a human to drink from them."

"Oh, what, you just take a sip, then?!" she squawked in disbelief. "Oh, it's fine, you just maim them in dark alleyways and run off so your fucking vampire _infrastructure_ can wipe your ass?"

Bolin's eyes were wide and round. "Mako, when you say you haven't hurt anyone in a year do you mean...do you just mean…?"

"I haven't bitten anyone," he snarled, starting to look defensive for the first time. "No humans."

"But the others, are you _defending_ them?!" Korra demanded.

"No, I'm not!"

"They just murder, with no consequences!"

 _"No consequences?!"_ Mako's clenched his fists angrily. His eyes flashed red, but it didn't scare her. If her eyes could do fancy things like that, they'd be shooting lasers right back at him. "You think there aren't any consequences?! My entire _existence_ is a fucking consequence for something I didn't ask for, something I didn't deserve! It's not like a craving. It's not like asking you to go vegan at Narook's on BBQ Wednesdays. This is more like an _addiction_. It's like asking someone to survive on a drop of water every morning! _That's_ what it feels like. No amount of deer or rabbit blood can make the thirst go away. It's constant, it's strong, and it's like I can't ever focus on anything a hundred percent because it's just always _there._ When a little kid skins her knee bloody falling off her bike I have to run off because every fiber of my being, everything that I am, wants to grab her and tear out - "

"Stop." Bolin whimpered. Mako just looked at him, defeated.

"I've tried animal blood, preserved human blood from the blood bank, I've even tried drinking my own damn blood." He rolled up a sleeve and showed them the two new puncture wounds healing on his arm. They hadn't known it was getting that bad. "All it does is keeps me alive. I'm still just always hungry, always thirsty, always resisting the powerful apex predator instincts vampires have evolved for as long as humankind existed. I kill myself every fucking day to stay in control because...because…"

 _Because of Bolin and I_ , Korra realized. He fought everything he was because of them, wanting to still be a good friend and brother in their eyes.

"Listen, I don't claim to know what it's like being a werewolf, but at least that part of you disappears like 353 days of the year." Mako sounded exhausted. "I'm a monster every day and it's...really tiring not to just let myself be a monster. Really, really tiring."

"I'm sorry," Korra found herself whispering. She couldn't imagine it, being the wolf every single day. She could barely handle it exclusively on full moons, and even then it wasn't like she actually remembered the experience.

He shook his head.

"This isn't new. This is how it's always been, for all of us."

What could she say? Thank him for not hurting people, even though it caused him existential torture? Korra had no idea if any of this had changed who he was. He was still her best friend, and Bolin's big brother, that was for sure. He still loved them. He still liked all the weird things he used to like - indie rock vinyls, quinoa recipes, foreign films, vintage crap. Mako was still Mako.

Wasn't he?

He never slept, but never _looked_ sleepy. That was probably thanks to whatever vampire magic stuff made him immortal. In the same vein, he never lost or gained any weight, grew wrinkles, lost his hair, got dark circles in his eyes, or anything else that would indicate he was suffering. Obviously he got irritable every once in a while, but regular human Mako was always like that. Nothing had ever seemed particularly out of the ordinary. But all this time...

"Not everyone can resist the vampire instinct," he continued. "And knowing first hand what it's like, I honestly can't blame any of them for giving in sometimes. I won't hurt anyone, I've already gotten this far, but I can't blame any of the rest of them for choosing not to live like this."

They just looked at him silently. Mako wasn't technically advocating hurting or killing people, but he wasn't condemning those that did it. Bad guys and good guys were shaken up into this grey area with him smack dab in the middle. Korra had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to feel about this.

"I'm gonna make some tea," Bolin said, disappearing abruptly.

Mako let his head fall into his hands.

"I didn't want either of you to know this," he said bitterly. "Bolin is such a good guy. He always was. He could never understand something like this. Something like me."

"Mako…"

"I freaked you out," he said. "I can see it on your face. Now that you know..."

He wasn't wrong, she was a little scared of the whole the vampire infrastructure thing, but not of Mako. Never of Mako. All this time, he had been suppressing everything he was. He held his rabid wolf in every single day and never said a word. All for them. If anything, Korra should have felt more proud of him, not more disgusted. Mako wasn't a monster for this. This made him _human._

Mako was still theirs. More so than ever before, really, because it was clear now that he needed them. If he wanted to cling to his humanity, he needed people to do it for. The first step was distancing himself from those thugs in the parking lot, and he'd taken it all on his own.

"I'm not freaked out, I just feel guilty," Korra said softly. "You should have told us it was this bad. We knew it was hard for you, but I don't think we ever really understood how hard. You never showed it, so we just assumed you were okay…"

"There's nothing you can do," he shrugged. "Better, older vampires than me have tried. Zaheer himself is over three hundred years old. He tried going clean, but his streak lasted fifty years before falling off the wagon again."

Korra sat down and hugged him suddenly, which always left him floundering a little. She waited for his obligatory awkward pat on her back before letting go.

"Zaheer didn't have me or Bolin," she said confidently. "We won't let anything bad happen to you."

"That seems to be our motto lately," he said sardonically. "But look at us. We're both still bruised and bleeding."

"You're both still _alive_."

Bolin had reappeared suddenly with two cups of steaming hot tea.

"Well, I mean, figuratively in Mako's case. Not that being alive means all that much to me, anyway." He shook his head. "Okay, wait, this is coming out all weird. What I'm trying to say is, you're both still here. With me. So we're all gonna be okay. Okay? That's enough about that."

He set the tea on the coffee table firmly and glared as if daring them to challenge him. Korra knew what he was doing, he was sweeping it under the rug. Bolin did that sometimes when things got to be too much. She imagined it was how he stayed happy all the time, although it solved nothing. Some day, it would need to be addressed. There was a possibility, slim as it might be, that Mako could fail. And there was the possibility that this vampire society thing could catch up to them, could ruin everything.

"Okay," Korra said, taking her cup. Mako didn't immediately take his.

"Bolin, I know this isn't - "

"I'm here for you," he said shortly. "So is Korra. No one has anything to worry about. That's the whole point of this, isn't it? All us freaks under one roof? The other vampires don't matter, whatever werewolf infrastructure might be out there don't matter, I don't care if the other ghosts have a fucking battleship in Yue Bay where they wage war on fucking mermaids! So drink your tea and stop acting like we should feel any different about you!"

Mako obediently took his tea and looked over at Korra, who nodded.

"That's two for the Swear Jar."

"You guys suck." Bolin grumped, plopping down on the table.

Korra laughed. "Anyway, I'm glad you left your job at the hospital."

"They got too preachy," he admitted. "It was nice at first, having vampire friends. Like a community feeling, you know? But they would talk about stuff…"

"Like what?"

"Dumb stuff." Mako waved his hand dismissively. "It was all just like, vampire locker room talk. Some of them kind of feel like we're being oppressed or something. I don't know. It was stupid. It was tolerable for a while, but then I got tired. Especially since I don't agree and they knew I lived my life a certain way. It's like having a bunch of racist coworkers, you know?"

Bolin shrugged. "I'm glad you got out of there when you could, then."

"Yeah," Korra agreed, although it did make her feel uneasy. "But, like, a vampire revolt can't actually happen, though. Can it?"

Mako shook his head. "The entire history of vampires is literally them just trying to prevent stuff like that. They don't even want humans to know they exist and look - we're still only a myth after thousands of years."

It was a good point. Vampires had an eternity to stage a coup and it hadn't happened yet.

"Anyway, they took offense to me leaving my job. I guess they felt like I was turning my back on them. I haven't really seen them since I left, so I guess this was their moment to show their muscle. Ming-Hua and Ghazan are basically thugs for Zaheer. That's all that was about. Nothing else."

Mako's revelation about the seedy vampire underworld had gotten her thinking. Never once had Korra considered seeking out another werewolf. The very idea of it sounded catastrophic - two destructive, bloodthirsty beasts in one place at the same time? She shuddered at the thought.

Or would it be a support system, like Mako's coworkers once were? Another person to talk to. Someone with shared experiences, maybe someone with _more_ experience. Someone that could help her? Come to think of it, what if they could find someone to help Bolin? Another non-crazy ghost?

"Have any of your old vampire buddies met any other werewolves or ghosts like us?" Korra asked him. "Werewolves in the city, or ghosts that weren't horrifically insane?"

Mako looked surprised at the question.

"They've come across them, yes, but I guess it doesn't come up a lot. Why?"

"Just wondering," she found herself saying. She wasn't quite sure why she didn't want to bring it up to Mako yet, but this definitely didn't seem like the time.

Bolin rubbed his hands together eagerly, clearly more satisfied with this conversation than Korra was.

"Well, if we're done with this emergency family meeting, my new Stellar Battles blu-ray collection should be delivered soon and I'm thinking maybe I can make you guys some kettlecorn and - "

 _BRINGGG!_

Bolin nearly shot through the ceiling.

"That's it! It's here, it's here! Korra, go, go, go!"

He shoved her towards the door and she made a show of rolling my eyes at Mako before opening it.

It wasn't Bolin's blu-ray delivery. Instead, a middle-aged gentleman stood at the door. He wore plain clothes and simple work boots, with a shaved head and deep wrinkles that only appeared when smiled softly.

"Hello," he said, his voice deep and charismatic. For just a moment, Korra almost felt the impulse to smile back.

But then she caught the faint scent, a slight air of something that generally did not come from someone still walking around.

"Zaheer?" Mako asked, appearing behind her. "What are you doing here?"


	6. Visitors

**CHAPTER SIX - Visitors**

* * *

Zaheer's eerie smile faltered at the doorway.

"This must be your werewolf friend. I'm sorry, I never got your name."

Korra had never spoken to another vampire before. Not really. She'd come across a good amount, but there was never anything more than a few catcalls, leers, and derogatory remarks. According to Mako, the scent of werewolf blood wasn't particularly pleasing. He'd gotten used to her, obviously, but it was pretty clear that Zaheer was not. The older vampire seemed uneasy, as if her presence was mildly annoying.

Just as she was about to rudely answer, Mako cut in.

"What are you doing here?" he asked again coolly. "We were kind of busy just now."

If Zaheer noted the tone, he didn't show it. "I see that. A werewolf, a vampire, and oh, that fellow is a _ghost?_ I don't think I've ever seen such an unusual hodge-podge under one roof. You never told me about this interesting group you've surrounded yourself with."

Korra felt a little bothered at how he acknowledged them. There was barely any emotion in those eyes of his, where his creepy smile never seemed to reach, but the way he listed them off made her feel like they were just objects. Things that belonged to Mako that he'd collected in his travels or something. It was getting fairly obvious that this guy had little regard for non-vampires, although at least Korra wasn't sensing any overt aggression here either. Not like with the others.

Bolin quietly stood behind Korra, watching the exchange closely.

"Zaheer..." Mako pressed again.

"I just wanted to apologize on behalf of Ghazan and Ming-Hua. I see now that they were understating the injuries they inflicted on you and your wolf."

" _His wolf?_ " Korra barked. "Excuse me?"

"Apologies," he said gently, but not at all apologetically. "Mako, please, let me clear the air between us. Those two have been nursing their bruised egos since you left your position and I'll admit, they've always been a bit immature. I had no part in what they did, although I did sternly warn them that this type of thing won't be tolerated again. Your career may have taken a different path, but I still consider us friends."

Mako frowned. "I told everyone to just leave me alone."

"And we intend to from this point forward."

All three of them shared a skeptical look. Mako shook his head.

"Those two don't even seem the type to frequent hipster coffee shops - "

"Air Temple Espresso is _not_ hipster," Korra protested.

"It's _so_ hipster," Bolin whispered.

"Whatever. What were they even doing there?"

Vampires had the tendency to avoid social environments during the day. If they went out in public, it was usually in the safety of nightfall, to clubs or bars or other historically dark and sinister vampire haunts.

"They were just roaming, as they are known to do. You remember how those two are. According to Ghazan, they saw you driving down to to the coffee shop and foolishly decided they wanted to cause trouble. Again, I've already spoken to them about this and you won't be seeing them again."

Korra scowled. Somehow, she didn't quite believe that. A cursory glance at Bolin showed he didn't, either.

"Sure," Mako shrugged. "It's fine. We're fine. If me or Korra ever run into those losers again I'll rip their bottom jaws out with my bare hands, but you and I are cool, okay?"

"Good," Zaheer's lifeless grin widened. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Um, another time? We really were talking about something important."

The grin began to evaporate.

"Of course. My apologies one last time. I'll leave you to it, I just wanted to make sure…"

"We're fine, Zaheer. We're good."

"Very well," he sighed. "It was nice to see you again, Mako. We miss you at the hospital."

Mako rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Yeah, well..."

"You should know," Zaheer said, his tone darkening ever so slightly. "It is in a vampire's nature to seek others like themselves. If you ever find yourself...wanting of our company again, do not hesitate to find us. You know where we are."

Zaheer looked over at Korra and Bolin, simply nodding at them once.

"Good evening."

Mako closed the door and waited until Zaheer was back on the street before turning around. Outside, Korra could see him hastily pull out a cell phone and call someone. The heated exchange stopped abruptly when he glanced back at their window and saw her watching him, which prompted him to scoot away down the road a little faster.

She quirked an eyebrow. "What a freaking weirdo."

"Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"Sorry for what?" Bolin asked. "Being friends with a killer that's also racist against ghosts and werewolves?"

"'Friends' is kind of a strong word - "

" _He_ called you friends," Korra pointed out. She deepened her voice dramatically. _"EET EEZ EEN A VAM-PIYAH'S NAY-CHAH TO SEEK OTHAS LIKE THEMSELVEZZ! BWAAA-HAHAHAHA!"_

" _I VANT TO SUCK YO BLAHHHHHHD!"_ Bolin joined in.

"He was nice to me, all right?!" Mako said, frustrated. "It's been hard, and he helped me out. I'll apologize for not realizing him and his people were awful sooner, but that's it. Anyway, I quit, remember? That's why I didn't invite him in. He's not coming over again."

He'd meant that literally. Like all vampires, Zaheer wasn't physically able to enter a home unless invited in by the people that lived there. If the old vampire had any nefarious plans, which judging by the sheer creepiness that exuded from his every pore he _did_ , then the worst he'd be able to do to them would be making faces in the windows. Whatever bullshit the vampires were up to, they wanted nothing to do with it.

Mako stalked back to the couch and grumpily started sipping his lukewarm tea again. Korra joined him, gently bumping her knee on his.

"So...I smell that bad, huh?"

A smile hinted at his lips. "Not that bad."

"He was like, ready to crawl out of his own skin."

Bolin sat on the coffee table in front of them. "What's she smell like? Is it like, wet dog or something?"

"Hey!"

"It's not a smell, really," Mako said, smirking. "It's just, vampires sense blood really well. It's so strong, I guess for our survival. But werewolf blood is not at all appetizing. It's like opening a stocked fridge and finding all the food inside rotten."

"I smell rotten!?"

"No! Just, not what's expected when you're looking at something you're supposed to eat." He could tell now that they were only messing with him. This, they were all used to. "What, do you _want_ to smell appetizing?"

Bolin laughed. "A girl likes to be desired! Jeez, no wonder you broke up with him."

"Right?" she sniffed. "At least I don't smell like roadkill."

"Roadkill!?"

"Having a sense of smell must be pretty wild, huh?" Bolin commented. "I don't even remember what that's like."

"I do not smell like _roadkill._ "

"What's that girl Asami smell like, Korra?"

She jerked and rounded on Bolin. "Can you not?"

His expression was teasing. "I saw how you were looking at her when she was here. When she told you she was into martial arts you practically got down on one knee."

"I did not, asshole."

Bolin slyly poked the Swear Jar across the coffee table. Korra gave him the finger which, thanks to the Obscene Gesture Amendment of 2016, meant she owed the damn thing another yuan.

"You were awfully excited to go with her to the coffee shop instead of me." Mako raised an eyebrow.

"Because I was mad at you and you're a dickhole, not because I - oh, come on!" Korra grabbed Bolin's sliding Swear Jar and shoved into it whatever change she had in her pocket. "Since when does'dickhole' count? No - stop looking at me like that, we established back in January that repetition for the sake of clarification doesn't count."

He snatched it back from her, grinning. "You're getting awfully cussy. Almost like you're being defensive or something."

"Shut up, Bo!" she tossed a throw pillow at him, which sailed right on through and hit the stairs. "Anyway, even if I did have a thing for her, I'm pretty sure we've nipped all of that in the bud. There's definitely no way we're ever hearing from her now. Not after all she's seen."

Mako jumped suddenly, startling them.

"Sorry, my phone was on vibrate," he said, swiping at the screen. "I have no idea who this is. It's local, right? A Republic City number?"

Korra leaned forward to see. "I think so, yeah. But I don't recognize it. One of your vampire comrades?"

Bolin gasped. "Wait a minute! That's Asami!"

" _What?!"_ Korra cried. "Seriously!? Are you sure?"

"Why does she have my number?!" Mako demanded, holding the buzzing phone away like it was made of worms.

"She put her number in her reply to our listing, it felt weird to not give her one of ours! I put it in our response email!"

"Well, then, you answer it!" Mako shoved the phone at him, seemingly in a mild panic. He recoiled.

"What if she can't hear me over the phone?"

"We've pretty firmly established that she can hear you, bro!"

"Well - but - no!"

Mako held it out to Korra. "She's _you're_ girlfriend!"

"Asami is _not_ my - shut up!"

She swatted the phone away as if she were afraid of it, accidentally causing Mako to drop it on the sofa cushions. The three of them hastily scampered away from it until it stopped ringing and the Missed Call icon appeared on the screen. They stared at it quietly for a few seconds.

"What now?" Bolin wondered from under the pillow Korra had thrown at the stairs, ten feet away.

"We don't have to do anything," Mako suggested from behind the sofa.

Korra poked her head up from behind the other side. "What do you think she wanted, though?"

The chorus of shrugs was vastly unhelpful.

"What if she just wanted to make sure you guys were okay?" Bolin said.

"Why would she do that?" Mako scowled.

Bolin pointed a thumb over at Korra and winked suggestively.

"Would you just…?" she got up and grabbed Mako's phone, drawing his security shape on the grid to unlock it.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Mako reached out to take his phone back but she turned away.

"Finding out what she wanted," she huffed. There was nothing to be afraid of and, honestly, she wasn't going to be rude and not call back just because the stupid boys thought she had some kind of crush. They stared at her as she counted the rings. On the third, a tense voice answered.

"Hello?"

"Asami?" Korra asked.

"Korra? Oh, thank God. Listen, do you know who those people were that attacked you?"

She put the phone on speaker so the others could hear. Mako was frowning, and Bolin was pinching his lips together with his teeth, as if scared to talk.

"Yes, it's okay. They were...um, vampires. Like Mako. But they were just thugs, they won't come after us again."

"They're...vampires?"

"Yeah. Asami, are you okay?" She could hear the anxiety in her normally easy, confident voice. "Where are you?"

"I'm not sure if I'm okay." Asami paused. "I'm on campus."

"Going back to your dorm?"

"That's the thing. I can't."

"Why not?"

"I'm in the quad now, and I can see up into the window of my room." She took a deep breath. "The lights just came on and I can see people inside, two of them. I can't see the bigger guy, but the woman is definitely - she hasn't got any arms. Korra, I think it's that couple from the parking lot."

All eyes averted to Mako, who blinked owlishly.

"I have no idea why they'd be there," he admitted. "That makes no sense."

"Do not go in there," Korra advised gravely. "Stay where you are. I'm coming."

Asami hesitated. "You are?"

"Me and Mako."

"What?" he demanded incredulously. "What are you - ?!"

"We have to help her!" she hissed. "These are your people, remember? We can't just leave her!"

Static roughed up the speakerphone as Asami moved. "I...think they're looking for something? I don't know what they could possibly…?"

Korra's mind went immediately to Zaheer on the street, urgently speaking to someone on his phone. The sinking feeling in her gut told her that this wasn't a coincidence. The timing was too perfect. Bolin must have felt it too, as he shoved his brother pointedly. He sighed.

"Okay, let's go."

"We're coming, Asami, stay away from there. Don't call the cops unless they go directly after you," Korra ordered. She hung up and glared at the others, as if daring them to challenge her. "Zaheer definitely just called Ghazan and Ming-Hua on his phone."

Mako still looked reluctant. "Just because we saw Zaheer take out his phone - "

" - right before his minions broke into Asami's dorm?" Bolin scoffed. "Like, maybe it's all just crazy timing, but that guy is _super_ shady."

"I don't think it's a coincidence," Korra shook her head. "No way. You wondered it out loud yourself - why were they at Air Temple Espresso? It was Asami's first time there, too, you knwo. Now they're at her dorm? I don't know what any of this means but this entire day can be made into a movie called _Not A Fucking Coincidence!_ "

Bolin didn't even bother with the jar.

"Why, though?" Mako wondered. "And then why would Zaheer come all the way here to talk to me?"

Bolin shrugged. "Maybe he was checking to see where you were?"

" _Why?"_

"To make sure we weren't with Asami," Korra realized. "To make sure she was alone?"

Maybe the they hadn't been the only ones spying on Asami lately.

"Why would they be interested in her?" Mako asked, his expression serious. "I knew there was something going on with that girl. They wouldn't be in her dorm unless she was up to something."

"You don't know anything." Korra scowled. "We've watched her for days, she's innocent."

"She can see Bolin! That was always suspicious!"

"More suspicious than people who _drink human blood!?_ "

"This could be a trap, Korra!"

"If the vampires wanted to take us down they've had their opportunities!" she shot back. "Same with Asami! If she was after us, somehow, she's been in our damn house. She's been with me alone. I don't think this is about us!"

Bolin grabbed Mako's keys and threw them at him. "Would you guys just get out of here already? Either make sure she's okay, or find out what's going on. This may not be completely about us, but we're involved whether we believe it or not."

Korra nodded in gratitude. Mako, of course, groaned.

"Bo, we'll call you and let you know what's going on, okay? Hold down the fort."


	7. The Satos

**CHAPTER SEVEN - The Satos**

* * *

Asami had migrated to the parking lot even closer to the dorm, so she was easy to find when Korra and Mako arrived.

"What are you doing here?" Korra hissed, ducking behind the same car she was hiding behind. "What if they see you? I thought you were over at the other side of the quad!"

"I needed to get a closer look," she said, barely paying attention to them. "But they just left, literally a minute before you guys showed up. No car, they just traipsed off campus that way, probably the east exit by the Arts building."

Sure enough when Korra looked up at Asami's room, as she was fairly accustomed to doing after three days of stalking her, it was empty.

"Huh, so now there's no one here," Mako whispered in Korra's ear. "How convenient and not at all trap-like."

Korra stomped hard on his foot. She'd already told him a thousand times in the car that if Asami wanted to ambush them, for whatever dumbass reasons Mako was making up in his head, she'd had three days worth of opportunities to do so already.

"Did they have anything with them?"

"I don't think they took anything. At least, it didn't seem like they were holding anything when they left." She looked at them, worried. "What were they doing in my dorm?"

Mako and Korra shared a look. Neither one of them wanted to tell her about Zaheer coming to the house, or the suspicious phone call he made that may or may not have prompted this burglary.

"Only one way to find out," Korra said, straightening and heading for the building. "Come on."

She led the way up to the side door, where Asami used her key fob to beep them in. At this, Korra glanced at Mako with concern. She was worried for no reason, though, as he had no problem following them inside and up the stairs.

"She didn't have to invite you in," Korra observed. "I thought I was going to have to leave you outside."

"What, and tie me up to a bike rack like a puppy?" Mako shrugged. "I've never been in a dorm before. It's a temporary housing situation, maybe it doesn't count as a home? It explains how Ghazan and Ming-Hua got in, anyway."

They followed Asami to the second floor and waited as she unlocked the door. She was first to go in, and she watched as Mako strode in effortlessly.

"So that thing about vampires not being able to enter homes unless invited...that's true?"

Korra nodded. "Yeah, he can't like, break into someone's house or anything. He can get into abandoned houses though, because no one lives in them. He can bust into apartment buildings, but not specific apartments, that kind of thing. Oh, and remember that time we went to the camping grounds and you found out you can enter people's tents and RVs and - ?"

"We were experimenting," Mako said quickly, nudging her with his elbow to make her shut up. "You know, testing out of curiosity. We weren't trying to steal anything or hurt anyone."

"We weren't being creepy," she echoed, realizing too late how weird their random trespassing sounded. "Like, one time we spent half an hour watching Bolin stick his arm through things and he'd ask us if we could see it from the other side. And once me and Mako spent the week before a full moon traveling to different time zones to see if it was possible to put off one of my full moon transformations.

Asami just blinked at them.

"...We just do stuff like that, sometimes," Korra said weakly.

Asami looked like she had dozens of questions on the tip of her tongue, but eventually she decided on just the one.

"What about the thing where vampires don't show up in mirrors?"

Mako stepped in front of a full length mirror next to the door and waved. There was no reflection to wave back.

"Nope."

She pursed her lips, considering her first supernatural scientific oddity.

"So the security cameras in the hallways…?"

"They got nothing. Sorry," Korra said.

It was as if Asami had forgotten the entire reason they were all there. She was utterly preoccupied with Mako and the mirror. She walked behind him and checked the reflection - Mako's reflection wasn't there to block hers. Tentatively, she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, but the mirror showed her fingers curled over nothing. Her own befuddled expression stared back at her incredulously.

"How is this possible? How the hell...you absorb and reflect light. I can see you. I can see your colors. I can…" She blushed, removing her hand from his arm, and looked back and forth between him and the mirror. "The specular reflection, I mean, the angle of light isn't even...this doesn't make sense."

"Yeah, well, welcome to our world," he said dryly.

"I read it had something to do with the soul," Korra suggested. "Like, vampires have no soul, so nothing is reflected back in mirrors."

"And I try not to be too offended by it every time she says that," Mako said dryly.

"Mirrors don't reflect souls, though," Asami said, still gaping. "They reflect light, send images to our eyes, they - _fuck_ , this is really stressful. This is basic physics and it isn't...it's not…"

Korra gently moved her away from the mirror.

"Okay, look. I don't think we need to freak out about photons or whatever right now."

This girl was hardcore physics. An engineering science major. She had schematics for unidentifiable machines and parts plastered all over her walls. Her whiteboard with mathematical equations and sketches took over nearly half the room. The desk was overrun with engineering books and scattered papers and science journals. She was someone that dedicated her whole life to studying and innovating physical, tangible things that followed laws set by nature. The existence of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts were likely strange and pretty frightening to her mind, but _light_ having the audacity to not _reflect_ properly? _Deplorable!_

"Does anything look like it's missing?" Mako asked, inching away from Asami and the mirror to brood over a stack of her engineering awards. He kept his hands respectfully at his sides, which Korra had to appreciate.

"Not really, no," Asami admitted absently. She took out her phone and aimed the camera at him. Nothing but her cluttered room appeared on screen. "What the _fuck_ \- I mean, sorry, but you cast a goddamn shadow! How do you not have a reflection?!"

"What am I, a fucking lab experiment?"

"Mako!" Korra scolded, although she couldn't really blame him. Mako absolutely hated what he was, he didn't need someone shining a light into his eyes. It was embarrassing, intrusive, and disrespectful. Still, he could have been a little bit less harsh.

Asami looked surprised. "Sorry, I didn't realize - "

"Of course you didn't."

"She's sorry, Mako, relax." Korra put a hand on his arm to calm him.

"I _am_ relaxed!" he said defiantly. " _She_ needs to relax!"

"I'm just curious," Asami reasoned. "Like how you just said - you've experimented yourselves."

Mako bristled. "Except _we_ weren't making other people feel like freakshows!"

To her credit, she didn't seem afraid of him. But it was Korra's experience that bravery and curiosity needed a little balance with empathy and humility.

"He's not wrong, Asami," Korra said quietly. "It doesn't feel good, especially coming from people like you who don't have to deal with it themselves."

Now Asami looked adequately ashamed. She swallowed.

"I didn't think about it like that. That was stupid of me and I'm really sorry, Mako. I didn't mean to make you feel...bad."

He just huffed and busied himself looking around the room. Asami sighed and looked at Korra.

"I'm an asshole."

"Nah." Korra made a face. "Or, well, maybe just this one time. For like a second."

"Sorry."

"I know. Hey, undead burglars in your dorm, remember? Does it look like they did anything?"

"Right. Yeah," Asami said, still flustered. She sheepishly straightened a stack of books. "Um, I know the room is a little disgusting, but it always looks like this. I wasn't planning on staying long, so I never really got too invested in tidying it up."

It wasn't a dirty mess, so disgusting wasn't quite the word for it. The clothes piled on her bed all smelled freshly laundered, there weren't any open containers of food or crumbs anywhere, and it wasn't like the trash can was overflowing with garbage and flies. In fact, everything seemed ironically clean, just piled up haphazardly so they were out of her way.

"It's not a disgusting. It's just...entropy! The natural state of things, " Korra said. Asami looked at her in surprise. "Hey, don't look so shocked. I didn't just dissect frogs in 8th grade, y'know."

She grinned at that as she ruffled around folders and papers on her desk.

"I can't imagine what they were looking for. It's literally just my school projects in here."

Korra glanced at the whiteboard again. "Anything interesting?"

Asami shrugged. "I mean, it's very interesting to me. I have a few things in the works but currently my biggest project is an extremely powerful rotary engine. I've calculated a way to make it more compact than anything on the on the market. It's really exciting, but not of particular interest to anyone outside of the department. It's all theoretical, I haven't gotten a chance to work on application."

"Wait a minute," Mako said suddenly, pointing to a framed photo he'd found on her desk. "Is your name Asami _Sato?_ "

Korra looked at the photo as well. A woman that looked astonishingly like an older Asami beamed at the camera, next to a familiar-looking classic cherry red 1975 Satomobile Stallion. Her arm was curled gently around a giggling toddler, who was plopped on the hood of the car with a melting ice cream cone clutched in her tiny fists. The woman didn't seem to care in the slightest that her daughter was dripping chocolate all over her flashy sports car. They looked so happy.

For a moment, as she looked at the photo, Asami looked happy as well.

"Yes."

"Wait, Sato? As in, _Satomobile?_ " Korra asked in awe. " _That_ Sato?"

Behind the car in the picture was a large building, with the words "SATOMOBILE WORLDWIDE, INC." It clicked for her then - Satomobile Worldwide was now just a subsidiary of the Sato-owned parent company Future Industries, which was a worldwide business _juggernaut_. It had started with a guy that invented some fancy mass-produced engine, and blew up over the next twenty-five years into one of the largest multinational corporations in the world.

Essentially, Korra was staring at the richest person she'd ever met in her life.

"Future Industries and Satomobile Worldwide belong to my father, yes," she said wistfully, still gazing at the photo. "He gave that car to my mother in '97 after he restored it himself. She died about five years later and left it to me. My dad left it to rot in a garage until I was old enough to restore it again myself, and I've been maintaining it ever since. It's still a really great car."

Korra smiled softly. "I'm sorry about your mother. But if it makes you feel any better, literally everything in that photo is gorgeous. You, your mom, and the car."

"Thank you."

"If you're a Sato, you must have money," Mako said skeptically. "Why are you looking to rent a room for cheap?"

" _Rude,"_ Korra warned him.

Mako winced. "Okay, sorry about your mom. Not trying to be rude. I just thought it was weird. Future Industries is famous all over the world. It's not like it's just Satomobiles anymore, they've branched out into technology, aviation, rocketry, even crazy military stuff. You must be _loaded_."

It was pretty strange that the heiress to Future Industries was living in a tiny dorm room, even if it was a private room, on campus. Even stranger that she was now looking for a cheaper off-campus alternative.

"I am loaded. Kind of." Asami's eyes averted to the floor, as if she were a little embarrassed. "When my mother died, my father kind of fell apart. I stood it for as long as I could, but in the end I had to back away. We don't talk, I haven't spoken to him for three years."

Mako looked about to say something stupid, but before Korra could stop him, it flew out of his mouth.

"What'd he do?"

" _Rude_ , Mako!" Korra fumed. "That's none of our business."

"I'd rather not talk about it," Asami replied, seemingly unoffended. "Anyway, my mother left me a fortune in a trust fund, but I can't touch it until I'm thirty. I think she wanted me to learn the value of hard work. You know, making myself into something instead of just being given everything. But I'm allowed to access a limited amount for my education and expenses. I've splurged a little more than I probably should have on a few of my projects, so the funds are running a little lower than I'd like. This private dorm is really expensive, but I needed the space and didn't want to disturb a roommate. So I'm looking for other options so I can stretch my education cash to the end of the school year."

It made sense. Asami Sato carried herself with an air of confidence, a hint of arrogance, with perfect hair, and perfectly done lipstick. The clothes she wore were respectable, but not extravagant. Her room wasn't neat, but clean. Everything about her indicated someone with a privileged upbringing, but without all the bells and whistles.

Mako rolled his eyes and continued looking around the dorm, and Asami silently followed suit. As they searched, Korra came upon an old photo album. The cover had another photo of Asami and her mother. They were older, and judging by Asami's age, it must have been shortly before Mrs. Sato died.

"You look just like her," Korra commented.

"Thanks," Asami smiled. "That's a compliment."

"Sure is."

She was pleased to detect just the slightest blush in her cheeks.

"You can look through it if you want. It's just photos of me as a kid," Asami said, busying herself with sorting through a box of old notebooks.

Korra helped herself, flipping through the album. Infant Asami and her mother in the nursery, presumably just after she got home from the hospital. Mrs. Sato feeding baby Asami in a high chair. Asami's first steps. Asami and her mother in the school hallway on her first day of preschool. Asami and her mother at her kindergarten graduation.

"Why isn't your dad in any of these?" she wondered out loud.

"Oh, he was always busy at the company," Asami replied dismissively. "I mean, he was there for all my important stuff. He was a good dad, but he had a company to run."

"But he's not here at all," she observed, looking at a page of photos that must have been the same day as the one framed on her desk. Asami was wearing the same red dress, skipping through the Satomobile Worldwide parking lot with her mother in tow. It was Mr. Sato's office building. Why wouldn't he be in these photos?

"Well, he did _take_ most of those. Someone had to be behind the camera, right? This was pre-selfie stick era. You know, the dark ages." She laughed, as if remembering something fondly. "He was super-obsessed with paintings though. He much preferred getting family portraits painted, rather than photographed. Every year on my birthday up until my mother died, I had to pose with my parents for fucking _hours_ just to get painted by a professional. All those paintings are still hung around the estate. It's almost creepy!"

Korra said nothing, and glared at Mako so he would do the same. He bit his lip and looked away, because they knew they were both thinking the same thing.

A vampire wouldn't show up in photos. A vampire would avoid cameras at all costs. And maybe, a vampire would get their daughter all mixed up in vampire business and have something to do with other vampires searching their college dorm.

Of course, it also didn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe Mr. Sato really was just a painting enthusiast. People had much stranger hobbies and preferences, especially if they were stupidly rich. Mako had gotten her werewolf cage at a _sex shop_ , after all. To each their own.

Still, though, this was not the time to bring it up to Asami. It clearly hadn't occurred to her at all, probably because she hadn't lived the past three years of her life as a monster and despite all her genius, it wasn't her instinct to think random stuff like that.

"Hey, what happened here?" Korra asked suddenly, holding up the album. It looked like a photo was missing. There was even a rectangular outline from where it had been pasted.

Asami frowned.

"Huh. It must have fallen out." She came over and looked around on the floor. "That album is pretty old, some of the adhesive has been coming loose. I've had to reinforce some of those with tape. I meant to scan them all so I have digital copies, but never got around to doing it."

She checked the bed, moving around her clothes to see if the missing photo was underneath.

"What was the picture of?" Mako asked, taking the album from me and checking out the page. The photo before it was of Asami and her mother in the front lobby of Satomobile Worldwide. The one directly after it was Asami perched on an executive's desk with a pen in her mouth, probably in one of the offices.

"It was in my dad's office," she said, straightening and looking somewhat worried. She took the album and traced the faint outline of the missing photo. "Obviously I was too young to actually remember that day, but I know we had tons of pictures in the offices and hallways of the building. It was the day my dad opened the Satomobile Worldwide Headquarters, so it was a huge deal, but I can't remember exactly which one _this_ was."

"Do you think...maybe that's what Ghazan and Ming-Hua came for?" Korra mused.

"I can't see why that would be," Asami said, her brows knitted in concentration trying to recall what the picture was. "Like I said, all these photos were just to commemorate the Satomobile HQ. They were all kind of the same. Just me and my mom sitting and posing in different spots, I think."

Mako looked around at the rest of the room. "Well, nothing else seems to be missing. There is the possibility, though, that they could have taken photos with their phones of something. If they wanted one of these formulas or were interested in you schematics, they didn't have to take them. All they needed was to snap a pic and sneak away."

"My engine?" Asami asked, putting the album down. "I mean, I'll admit it's cool, but what do vampires need with an engine?"

Korra shrugged. "Vampires are weird."

"Vampires are ambitious," Mako said, looking concerned. "I don't even want to know what some of the bigger assholes would do with advanced technology."

"That's a little generous," Asami said humbly. "It's never been done before, sure, but it's still just a school project."

They fell silent, trying to think. Nothing was physically removed from the room, other than maybe some random photo from an old album. It was possible they'd taken something else, but they couldn't figure out what. Asami had also said they'd had plenty of time to root through her things, so whatever it was, they weren't rushed and they likely already got what they came for. That meant they probably wouldn't return. Still…

"Are you comfortable sleeping here tonight?" Korra asked. Mako's eyes widened and he shook his head violently behind Asami.

"I mean, I'm sure they're not coming back. They've got no reason to anymore," Asami said, clearly not at all sure.

"That would be my guess," she said. "But I know this is a little unsettling. And while I know that it's probably even more unsettling that Mako, Bolin, and I locked you in a cage and then stalked you for three days straight..."

"Well, I think I'd put those two things pretty close together."

"...our house is safe." Korra scowled at Mako, who was still vigorously waving his hands at her, trying to get her to shut up. "The only vampire that can enter it is Mako, and all things considered, he's completely harmless."

"I am not." He scowled.

"Harmless to you, I mean," Korra amended, to preserve his fragile vampire masculinity. "Just like me and Bo. So, if you're not still too freaked out by the cage thing, and the stalking thing, and the existence of mythical creatures existing beyond the teachings of science thing, I mean, you're still welcome to rent the room."

Mako audibly let his head fall back and bang dramatically against the wall behind him. But he was just being a jerk. In the span of three days, this poor girl just had her entire world blown apart. She needed a safe place to stay, and frankly, they needed her money. There was also the fact that somehow, Asami was involved with vampires, whether she realized it or not. And she was definitely involved in the supernatural, with her ability to see ghosts. Korra felt this indescribable urge to protect her, for some reason. Maybe it was because they were Asami's first introduction to this seedy underworld, or maybe it was because she felt guilty for putting her in a cage. But either way, she felt responsible for this girl. It wouldn't have felt right to just cut things off now.

"You want me to live with you," she repeated.

"I'm just saying, it's safe with us," Korra said. As a joke, she added. "And if anyone tried to get you, the cage will protect you!"

Too late, she realized it wasn't funny. Mako shook his head in pity.

 _Dumbass._

Despite the frown, though, Asami seemed to be considering it.

"Thank you. I think," she said. "I'll sleep on it, okay?"

"Yeah, sure, no worries," Korra said, trying to put just the right amount of swagger in the statement. Mako rolled his eyes.

"Let's go," he said, ushering Korra out of the room.

"Wait!" Asami said. "I also wanted to thank you for coming. It was really nice of you to help me out."

"No problem-o," she grinned nervously, trying to wriggle out of Mako's grasp. "Think about it and shoot us a text-o."

 _No problem-o? Shoot us a text-o?_

"Um, right." Asami smiled awkwardly.

Mako dragged her away as she tried to melt into the floor and cease to exist.

"Smooth, Kor. Real smooth."

"Fuck off, Mako."


	8. A Rogue Vamp

**CHAPTER EIGHT - A Rogue Vamp**

* * *

The next day, Korra went to extreme measures to avoid Asami on campus. She avoided her usual shortcut through the physics building in case she was between classes, and instead added ten minutes to her walk to the lecture hall by taking the path around the massive Beifong dorm complex.

"Ohhh, we were wondering why you left so early for class! You worried us when we realized you weren't in your room!" Bolin laughed on the phone. It was a recently discovered development, that ghost voices could travel over cell phones. Also recently discovered was the fact that if he called and a normal human picked up, they could _not_ hear him. Asami would have gotten a kick trying to work that one out.

"It's just the scenic route," she grumbled, speeding up to a brisk trot. Korra hadn't exactly thought it through. Being out of the house earlier didn't mean her train was going to arrive earlier. Which, of course, it didn't. Now she was probably going to be late.

"Really? More scenic than running into Asami and her long wavy tresses, enchanting green eyes, and ruby red - "

"I'm almost at my lecture." Korra cut him off. "I'm hanging up on you now. Give Mako his phone back."

"Okay, shoot us a _text-o_ after class!"

"Fuck you."

" _Swear Jar!"_ Bolin sang before ending the call. She shoved her phone in her pocket. The boys were never, ever going to let her live that one down.

"Ooooh. Swear Jar."

Korra jumped and whirled around to find Asami standing two feet away. She was grinning, holding a school bag on one hand and a large cortado in the other. There was a strong end-of-summer breeze that Korra wished would just stop for a second, because while it was blowing her own short brown hair into a frenzied mess, it was somehow making Asami's jet black mane billow perfectly like in a goddamn photo shoot.

"A-Asami?" She smiled anxiously. "I promise, I'm not following you. In fact, I've been trying to avoid you."

"You're trying to avoid me? Why?"

 _Shoot me a text-o._

"I don't know, it's been a long week for you. I figured you're getting real tired of us."

Asami's pleasant grin faltered. Her hand came up, and stopped midway to Korra's face before she awkwardly dropped it again.

Korra blinked at her.

"Your face still looks awful from yesterday," Asami said quickly, putting her hand on her own cheek. She mirrored her action and winced at the sharp pain at her cheek bone. She'd forgotten about all the bruising.

"It's okay."

"Do you have, I don't know, an expedited healing process or something?"

"What? I'm a werewolf, not Wolverine!"

Asami blushed. "Anyway, speaking of things that make absolutely no sense - I remember what was in that photo that was missing last night. I need to talk to you guys."

Korra's eyebrows shot up and all plans for the rest of her day disappeared from her brain.

"What was in the photo?"

"More like who. I'll tell you about it later."

"What? Wait, no, you can tell me now!"

Asami looked uneasy, glancing at the clock tower on the building behind them.

"Oh, my God," Korra said incredulously. "Are you that hung up on being late for class? Really? Like that's more important?"

"I mean, kinda! I have an aeronautics quiz coming up!"

"So? You're a genius, you'll catch up. Come on, let's go - "

Asami made a face. "But I love aeronautics."

"Wow. _Nerd._ "

"I'm not going to let you peer-pressure me into skipping class, Korra. You shouldn't do it either."

"But I have three classes in a row! I can't wait that long!"

"I can drive you home, if you want, and we can talk then." She looked around discreetly. "I'm not all that comfortable talking about it here, anyway."

They were surrounded by students all hurrying to the lecture hall for their morning classes. In all the mad rushing about, it was awfully suspicious of them to be standing around exchanging hushed whispers.

"Fine. My last class ends at three, and it's a good thing I'm off work today."

"My classes are done by one, but I had laser lab booked for this evening. I'll see if I can change the time - what?"

Korra was gaping at her. "What the hell is a laser lab?"

"The laboratory for laser energetics?" Asami clarified. "You seriously don't know we have a laser lab? That's basically the whole reason I wanted to come to this school."

"You get to use _lasers?_ That's _so_ fucking cool."

"Well, if you want, I can - "

Someone suddenly bumped into her as they rushed to the lecture hall.

"Watch it!" Korra called angrily. She gently pulled her closer to avoid another running student. "Are you okay?"

"Of course. Um, anyway, I was just trying to tell you I can get you into the laser lab, if you want," she smiled. "It's actually kind of fun. I can show you some Lissajou patterns, total internal reflection, maybe a little beam modulation…"

Korra swallowed. If she didn't know better, it would almost, _almost,_ sound like she might be possibly proposing a nerdy laser science date with her.

Yet another person pushed past them rudely.

"Sorry!" he called, clearly not sorry. "I wanted to see the body before they took it away!"

He disappeared into the lecture hall. It was only then that they realized a lot more people were running to the lecture hall than was expected at 8 in the morning on a Friday. It was a universally known fact that college kids avoided 8 AM classes like the plague, and if it was unavoidable, they usually just sort of trudged. But through the windows, they could see a crowd forming in the hallway, outside of room LH11.

"I'm gonna be honest with you," Korra said. "I really, really wanna pretend that guy didn't just say the word 'body' to us."

"What on earth…?" Asami slowly started towards the the commotion, then broke into a trot as more kids came rushing over.

They got to the lecture hall together, but there were too many people to actually get a good look. Police were just arriving, trying to fight through all the students.

"Move, move!" A strong-looking female officer with graying hair and a formidable scar on cheek roughly shoved past them. "If you kids don't move I'm throwing all your asses in jail for obstruction of justice!"

That got maybe three people out of the way, but the woman and her squad just managed to push through. They grasped the partly open doors of LH11 and pulled them all the way open.

"Oh, my God," Asami whispered.

At the very front of the lecture hall was a massive pool of blood. Korra almost didn't see the body it had come from, there was so much spreading across the floor right before their eyes. It was a woman, as pale white as the linoleum floor used to be. She was very obviously dead, but that wasn't what spooked her the most.

The woman's neck was torn apart. There didn't seem to be any other wounds on her body, just the gaping wound and shreds of flesh that used to hold her head to her body. Her head was practically hanging by a thread. And if the scene wasn't already gruesomely horrible, the kids that held out their cell phones trying to take pictures made everything overwhelmingly worse.

As a werewolf, Korra had to deal with a whole other level of awfulness aside from the visuals - the smell. The smell of vomit wafted around her as a few people threw up in front of them. Others made faces or held their noses, but they didn't have her sense of smell. It nearly knocked her over. She could smell the corpse from all the way outside, the hint of decay, the metallic tinge to the liters of blood creeping across the floor.

Korra gagged, having to turn away and pull her t-shirt over her face.

"I know, this is…" Asami swallowed. "Is this...from a…?"

It was. It absolutely was. The lingering scent of a very specific type of death was still there, hovering over the body like a dark cloud.

"I think so. I think a vampire did this."

" _Listen up!"_ the female officer shouted. "This is an active crime scene. All you kids back off, do you hear me!?"

A balding man that Korra recognized as a calculus professor spoke up. "Chief Beifong, can you tell us what could have done this? It almost looks like it was done by an animal!"

 _Chief._ This was the police chief Mako had told them about. The one that was a vampire. She could smell it on her.

Korra felt a burning in her veins as she realized what was about to happen. They were going to cover it up, hide evidence. There would be no justice for that poor woman who was violently mauled to death. Whoever did this was going to get away with it, for the sake of vampire _infrastructure_.

"I promise you that we will find whoever or whatever did this. But for now, everyone needs to _GET. OUT._ "

Korra stormed out of the lecture hall before the rest of the crowd began to disperse at the insistence of the armed police. Asami stumbled after her.

"Korra? Are you okay?"

"No."

"I know. My God, I've never seen anything like that. I can't believe…"

"I can't…" Korra bent over, hands on her knees, gasping for breath. She was sweating profusely, as if she'd just run a mile. Her heart was pounding. The sickening stench was still surrounding her, as if clinging to her nose and refusing to let go. "I'm sorry, I…"

"No, it's fine," Asami said, concerned. She crouched down, holding her hair back, in case she actually hurled. "Wait...it's the smell, isn't it? You have a really good sense of smell. You can smell all of that, can't you."

Korra nodded weakly. The murder scene was disgusting. The police that were about to cover it all up were disgusting. But the smell? That was beyond anything conceivable in any nightmare.

"Come on. Let's get to the library."

It was a good idea. Asami ushered her into the main campus library and the crime scene was immediately washed away by the scent of old moldy books and too-strong coffee. Korra sighed in relief.

"Wow. Thanks, that was…"

"A lot."

"Yeah. Um…" Korra suddenly bolted towards the bathroom by the coffee stand. It was thankfully empty as she dove headfirst into a stall and released the inevitable.

As she heaved pitifully into the toilet, she heard the door open and a light step come towards her. A gentle hand gathered her sweaty hair again and held it back patiently. Korra was so busy emptying the considerable volume of her werewolf stomach into the toilet that she couldn't even spare a thought to be embarrassed by all this. She was throwing up at a frightening velocity. But when it finally ended and she thought maybe she'd lost her spleen and a kidney in the process, she turned around in shame.

Asami was holding a water bottle in her other hand. She let go of her hair and flushed the toilet.

"You should wash your mouth out."

Korra gladly took the water and stumble weakly to the sink, her dignity too long gone for her to care that Asami was tying her hair into a short ponytail with a rubber band she'd had around her wrist.

After a few deep breaths, she looked at Asami behind her in the mirror.

"Sorry."

"It's okay. Feel better?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Um, you can keep that."

Korra realized she was stupidly holding the water bottle out, for some reason, as if Asami would want it back after it was used to rinse vomit.

She turned around. "Sorry."

"Stop saying sorry. Are you sure you're okay?"

When she didn't answer, Asami guided Korra out of the bathroom and back onto the benches of the library, where they sat wordlessly. More students filed in, thoroughly spooked at what they'd just seen. Quiet murmurs traveled across the library atrium.

"That was Professor Yangchen," Asami said quietly. "My physics professor last year. She was my advisor this year. Super smart, well-respected in the academic community, and one of the kindest people I've ever met."

A new onslaught of thoughts barraged Korra's blanked mind. Why would a vampire attack her? Were they after something? Had she seen something? Why make it so high-profile and obvious? Was this connected to Asami somehow? Was it connected to her father?

What would she do if it was?

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said finally.

Asami swallowed. "I'm okay. But she had kids. She had a grandchild on the way."

That hung heavy over them for a while, until Korra couldn't take it anymore.

"I can't stay here," she said, starting to feel queasy all over again.

"Let me drive you home," Asami offered. "I think it's safe to say classes will be cancelled for the day, and...we should to talk with your friends, anyway."

"Right. Okay. Yeah."

* * *

Mako looked stricken.

"No. This is wrong. That's not how to do it."

"Is there a _right_ way to kill a person?!" Korra demanded, still somewhat pale. Bolin sat next to her, trying to force a cup of tea into her hands. "Bo, I said I'm fine."

"I'll take it, if that's okay," Asami said. She had been sitting on Korra's other side on the couch. Bolin shyly passed it over to her. "Thank you."

"Um. You're welcome."

"Yes, there actually is a right way," Mako said, pacing. "It's Vampire 101. Zaheer taught it to me when I still worked at the hospital. You don't...kill...in public places like that. You don't kill prominent figures like a professor at the biggest university in the United Republic. And you definitely don't leave a mess like that for all to see, especially a bunch of kids with cameras on their phones. There's a system set for a _reason_."

Asami raised a hand.

"I'd just like to say that I both do and do not want to know what you're talking about."

Korra sighed. "Long story short: vampires have an _'infrastructure'_ , like, people in positions of power that help cover up stuff like this. It's how they managed to stay a myth for all these centuries."

"Oh. Well, I guess I really didn't want to know that."

Mako ran a hand through his hair in frustration.

"You said the police chief was there?"

Asami nodded. "Middle-aged lady with an attitude and crazy biceps like Korra?"

Korra coughed. Bolin elbowed her in the ribs, grinning.

"That's Chief Lin Beifong, yeah," he sighed. "She, the medical examiner, and the Red Lotus lawyers will fix this. They probably will pin this on some kind of wild animal attack. I wouldn't be surprised if later on tonight we hear on the news the cops shot some big dog or something on campus. They'll make a big show, evacuate the dorms and all that."

Asami's eyes widened. "Wait. The vampires have the cops and lawyers in their pocket?!"

Bolin mimed quotation marks with his fingers. _"Infrastructure."_

"Sort of," Korra tried to explain, although she wasn't sure she was okay with the answer yet, either. "Apparently, the vampires don't want to run the place. They just want to live their blood-lusty lives. Occasionally, someone dies, and they clean up their messes."

She put her tea down, looking cautiously at Mako. "So...oh. Oh."

"Not everyone is like Mako," Bolin said, quickly coming to his brother's defense. "It's hard for them, not everyone can pull off not drinking human blood, but Mako does."

Korra felt like she should have said something for him as well, but she still couldn't shake the image and smell from her brain. Bolin hadn't been there. He didn't understand what exactly this vampire had done. It was unforgivably evil.

"Okay…" She recognized the uneasy expression on Asami's face. It was the same one she had when Mako had told them. The difference was, she didn't know Mako like they did.

"So what was this, then? A rogue vamp?" Korra asked, trying to shift the subject.

"It happens," Mako said. "Most vampires go for people with no connections, you know, without families or friends that would miss them. Sometimes there's like, a vigilante thing going on or whatever, going after criminals and stuff. No matter what, though, the bodies are quietly disposed of. I don't know what this attack was. It was excessively violent - you don't have to maul a victim, we can only drink something like half a liter at a time and that can last us for days. Weeks, maybe. There hasn't been a gory, publicized attack like this since...well…"

"Us?" Bolin said.

"Well, yeah. Zaheer said they found the vampires that did this to us and...I don't know." He shrugged. "He told me I didn't want to know what the Elders did to rogue vampires that risked exposing our secret."

"Oh, there are Elders now," Korra threw up her hands. "Of course there are Elders, how could there not be Elders with you people?"

"So they do face justice," Asami said, her voice cracking.

"They do."

"Although, I guess it's more for being _obvious_ about it and not so much for the actual taking of an innocent person's life, right?"

Mako stopped pacing to look at her. "Not everyone is innocent."

"And who are these vampires to judge? Are you guys gods now?"

Korra stood up hastily. "Asami, he's not defending the vampire for what they did."

"It sure sounds like he is," she replied, a little bit more confident.

"They can't help who they are," Mako said through gritted teeth. "I know this was wrong, I know there are really dangerous vampires out there that shouldn't be, I know all sorts insane, evil, horrifying things. It's _you_ that doesn't understand."

"I understand that a good person is _dead_ right now."

" _I'm_ dead right now!" he snarled back. "So is Bolin. So was the vampire that killed that professor. So are a lot of people that were robbed of that chance to ever be _'good'_ again, but you don't know shit about that so why don't you shut your - "

" _Mako!"_ Korra and Bolin cried.

Asami swallowed hard, but she didn't look afraid. She looked contemplative.

"I'm sorry for what happened to you. And you, Bolin. But - "

Mako flared. "But what? What do you, some girl that just walked in off the street and into this life for like _four days_ , have to say about all this?"

Korra grabbed his hand.

"Hey. That's enough. You're right, she doesn't quite get it yet. That's no reason to jump down her throat."

"She thinks - !"

"I know what she thinks," Korra said quietly. "But I think it a little bit, too. And so does Bolin, and so do you. We can't blame her, right?"

Mako shook her away. "Why did you even bring her here?"

In all the commotion, even Korra had forgotten why Asami had wanted to speak to them in the first place. The missing photo.

"I remembered what was in that picture that was missing from my album," Asami said quietly, pulling the album out from her bag and flipping to the page. "All the photos from that section were from my Sato Worldwide HQ's grand opening, so it wasn't just me. There were lots of pictures of me with my dad's employees and stuff, too."

Bolin peeked at the album. "Aw, look how cute you were! Did you guys see this!?"

"Yeah, she was adorable," Korra admitted.

"She was okay," Mako grumbled.

Asami continued. "The picture that's missing was one of those with my dad's employees. They might have been business partners or something, actually, because they wore fancy suits and stuff. I was sitting on a desk, and a woman was sitting next to me smiling, with a guy behind the desk putting little bunny ears on me with his fingers."

"Classic," Bolin said. He'd taken the album and seemed enthralled at all the cute baby pictures.

"I never knew their names or anything. I probably never saw them again after that photo was taken, I mean, my dad had lots of people working with him. I don't recognize anyone else in all the other pictures, after all. That's why I didn't realize at first."

"Realize what?" Korra asked, although she was starting to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I didn't realize that the two employees in the photo were the two vampires that attacked you in the parking lot of Air Temple Espresso," she said. "The vampires that broke into my dorm."

Everyone just stared at her.

"I mean, they were just about the same age in the twenty-year-old photo as they are now, but they were cleaner cut and, well, much nicer-looking. Better dressed and happier," she explained. "That's probably why I didn't recognize them immediately. Also, uh, the woman still had arms back then."

More silent staring.

"And to make things even stranger, they must have recognized me. Maybe it was in that parking lot or whatever, but they had to have known I would make the connection. Why else would they go out of their way to steal the photo? To make sure I never realized it was them. And why would they do that? I'm just some human girl, right? Who cares if I recognized some of my dad's old coworkers twenty years later?"

Korra was the first to say anything, although it was just a soft, "Uhhh…"

"So, last night my mind went a little wild. I started thinking about my dad, and how he only ever took photos, and was never in them. There are other photo albums at the house, but I can't remember my dad being in a single one of them. I always chalked it up to him being weird and loving paintings, but now after all this I'm just...I meant, you said vampires don't show up on camera right? Am I being completely crazy?"

Mako and Korra shared a look. They'd come upon this exact thought last night.

"Maybe not completely," Korra said. "We did wonder why those vampires were at Air Temple Espresso in the first place. They weren't following either of us, they made it pretty clear that stumbling upon Mako was an accident."

Asami closed her eyes. "So you're saying they were probably scoping _me_ out."

"I mean it could have been a coincidence that they broke into your dorm shortly after they realized you'd seen them and might recognize them," Korra said. "But…"

"But probably not," she said softly. "Probably, I've been living in this world even longer than you guys have."

Bolin put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

"Welcome to the club, buddy. Let me make you more tea."

He took the cup into the kitchen. Mako frowned.

"Why do they care about you? What do they want from you?"

"It might be a good idea to maybe talk to your dad," Korra suggested. Asami shook her head.

"Absolutely not."

"He may have answers."

"I can work the answers out on my own," she said firmly. "I'm not speaking to that man. Or vampire. Or whatever he is."

"Hey, guys?"

They looked over at Bolin, who was staring out the window over the sink.

"What is it, Bo?"

"I think...I think this guy can see me."

Korra and Mako darted into the kitchen with him and the three of them leaned over the sink. Outside was an old blue car with heavily tinted windows. They could see through the windshield, though, and Mako's eyes darkened.

"That's Ghazan. Even if I couldn't see him, I recognize his car."

Ghazan seemed to sense the jig was up. The car tore down the street before Mako could even get outside. Korra and Bolin followed him and watched from the stoop as the car disappeared.

"I wonder what the heck that was all about?" Bolin said.

"I hate to make it like everything revolves around me," Asami said, joining them on the front steps. "But, it was probably about me?"

"It looks like you have a new set of stalkers," Korra joked. "Uh, sorry. I don't know why I keep thinking that's an okay thing to bring up."

"Still don't want to call your dad?" Mako asked.

"No. But I'm considering making a different stupid decision," Asami took a deep breath, looking mostly at Korra. "Is that room still available?"

She jerked. "Wait, really?"

"I'm not sure I feel particularly safe in my dorm anymore, and here at least I know only one vampire is allowed in. Right?"

"It's a home," Bolin nodded. "Vampires can't enter a home uninvited."

"I just...I think I can find my answers here. With you guys."

"We'll definitely try to help," Korra agreed. "The room is yours if you want it."

Mako slapped a hand to his forehead. "I honestly can't believe any of this."

"Shove it, bro," Bolin said. "You were on board last week, remember?"

"Yes, but I didn't realize our roommate would be able to see ghosts and have some kind of weird connection to vampires!" Mako insisted. "I mean, no offense, Asami, you're probably not awful. You seem kind of nice. But this is a big hot mess you're getting into."

"I'm already in it," she pointed out. "Maybe I always have been."

"Yes, but…" he sighed. "Okay, fine, I'll say it. I'll be the asshole. We're not here to protect you from anything. I'm not gonna risk Korra, Bolin, or myself for anything. Not even you."

"Fucking harsh, Mako," Korra said, scowling.

"I'm looking out for me and mine," Mako insisted again. "I don't know you, Asami. You're not our responsibility. Okay?"

Bolin threw a pillow at him. "Dude!"

Asami held up her hands. "I just want to live in a vampire-repelling house with people who know more about this stuff than I do. I won't ask anything except questions you're comfortable answering. You can kick me out whenever you want for whatever reason. I don't need your protection. I just need a little help getting used to all this."

He still looked skeptical and Korra was just about ready to push him upstairs and lock him in his room for a timeout, but Asami was way ahead of her.

"Did I mention I can cook?"

"This still doesn't seem like a good idea - "

"You can drive my car."

"Fine!" Mako threw his hands up in defeat as he stomped up the stairs to his room.


	9. Professor Yangchen

_**CHAPTER NINE - Professor Yangchen**_

* * *

Jinora emerged from the kitchen balancing two dangerously lopsided stacks of Air Temple Espresso-branded mugs. She was the owner's daughter, and as sweet as the fruit pies she baked back there. She was also only sixteen and still in high school, so Korra sometimes felt overprotective of her. Especially since the girl didn't look a day older than twelve.

"What are you trying to do over there, join a circus? Give me some of those."

She gently took one stack of teetering mugs and together they began to stock them back on the shelves behind the counter. Opal followed them with a wet mop. They were closing in two hours, but she always tried to start the clean-up early, so they could all go home early. It never seemed to matter to her that everyone was carrying around fragile objects and she was making the floors all slippery.

"So, I heard that professor that got killed the other day was actually mauled by a pack of coyotes or something - " Jinora began.

Opal scowled. "Wow, we really need to work on your conversation skills, kiddo."

" _Coyotes?!"_ Korra cried. The others looked startled by her enthusiasm, so she toned it down a bit. " Wasn't she...uh, murdered?"

It had been three days since Professor Yangchen was discovered with her head barely attached to her neck, and it had been a frustratingly long three days of unanswered questions. Mako had been keeping his ear to ground, but as far as he knew, no one had come forward. No one had been punished for the crime yet. She remembered his words that day, though, about how the vampire infrastructure was somehow going to blame everything on some kind of animal attack, no matter what vampire actually did it.

The media had been virtually useless. News reports were repeating the same thing over and over - the attacker was unknown, the professor was eccentric but well-liked, autopsy was pending, Avatar University was holding a memorial on Saturday, classes would resume the following Monday after being closed for the investigation, etc, etc.

Jinora shook her head. "No way. The preliminary autopsy report was leaked online this morning. I read there were _teeth marks_ in her neck. It was something with really sharp teeth, not a human."

 _She's not wrong._

"So they're still awaiting final forensics, but they're pretty certain it was some kind of canine. You know, with fangs."

 _Still not super-wrong._

"What about vampires!" Opal suggested jokingly.

 _Ding, ding, ding!_

"Right, because we need vampires back in the mainstream," Jinora scoffed. "As if we weren't enjoying a golden age of movies without sparkly vampires and shirtless werewolves."

"Hey, I liked those movies!"

As her coworkers bantered, Korra started drying the portafilters and drifted off into the thoughts that had been plaguing her since that day on campus.

Animals weren't monsters. That automatically excluded coyotes from the list of suspects, because what happened to Professor Yangchen was the act of a monster. She wasn't killed for food. An actual predator didn't leave that much behind - animals ate right down to the bone, no meat wasted.

But Professor Yangchen's body was wasted, abandoned for a purpose. Mako suspected the vampire hadn't even drank their fill, judging by how inefficiently gory the bite was. That wasn't a feeding. It was meant to spill, be messy, and cause an uproar. She was meant to be found. But by whom? And why?

"Radio silence from Kor over there." Opal waved her hand in front of her face. "What are you thinking about - _hah!_ "

"What do you mean ' _hah'?_ "

She realized too late she'd been gazing blankly in the direction of the doorway. It opened, but she could already see who it was through the glass. Asami, with her stupid perfect coconut-scented hair and a sweater that showed off her stupid perfect collar bones, came over to the counter with the worst timing imaginable.

"Gosh, no wonder you spaced out," Jinora whispered. "She's gorgeous."

"I wasn't - I wasn't spaced out!"

"You so were. Have you hit that yet?"

Korra tried to shove Jinora back into the kitchen where she belonged. "You are _sixteen_ , you're not allowed to say that! Go finish up the rest of the dishes!"

Opal snickered as Jinora ignored her, using her tiny frame to easily duck Korra's arm. It was only then that they noticed Asami's expression. She looked panicked, barely even noticing the other two girls as her eyes frantically locked on Korra's.

"Hey," she said tightly.

Korra furrowed her brow. "Uhhh, are you all right?"

"Remember when I called you last night and we were talking and I told you I was fine?"

She squinted at her. Since the day Professor Yangchen was discovered, Korra and Asami had taken to texting frequently. Asami had applied to end her room assignment on campus and get some of her money back, so she hadn't been in any extreme rush to move into the house until that happened. Especially since Korra checked in with her so often, making sure everything was okay. She asked every day if Asami had noticed anyone still following her around. Every day the answer had been 'no' - Ghazan and Ming-Hua seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet, as promised by Zaheer.

"Oh, right," Korra said slowly. "Yeah. You've been okay, right?"

"Not today," Asami said, her voice strained.

"You mean…?"

"No, not them."

"Huh? Then who?"

"Whenever you get a chance," Asami said frantically through gritted teeth. "I think I could use some assistance."

Opal and Jinora were staring back and forth between them.

"What are you guys talking about?"

Asami was gnawing on her own bottom lip and wringing her hands like someone was pointing a gun to her head and forcing her to rob a bank. She cleared her throat anxiously.

"Do you think you can take just, I don't know, a minute to come outside with me and chat?"

"Sure, sure." Korra removed her apron and tossed it at Opal. "I'll be right back."

They went outside, Asami wordlessly walking across the parking lot to her car. Korra followed curiously.

"Hey, what's going on? I can't leave, I have 2 more hours left on my shift."

"I need to show you something."

"Asami, what's…?"

Korra trailed off as she pulled open the passenger side door of her red Satomobile.

She didn't recognize her at first. The woman in Asami's car looked just as confused as her. She was older, in her late sixties. Her hairline was thinning and receding ever so slightly, but she had long, greying brown hair that hung youthfully below the shoulder. Her eyes and mouth crinkled at the edges like someone who'd spent a better part of her life smiling. She had a kindness and serenity to her that calmed Korra, and made her feel less on edge.

Then, she noticed the smell. Or rather, a lack thereof. Korra's knees almost buckled when she realized that she'd seen this woman before. Only that time, she had turned a pale blue and her neck was wide open, spilling a pool of dark red blood across the lecture hall floor.

"Oh... _fuck_."

Professor Yangchen's face twisted in distaste.

"Language."

"Oh, um, sorry, Professor."

Yangchen cocked her head. "I don't believe you were ever one of my students. I never forget a face, even in the huge intro classes."

"It's true. She remembers everyone," Asami agreed. Korra stared at her incredulously.

"Okay, Asami, it's very important that you understand what I'm about to tell you. Professor Yangchen is a - "

"Yes, yes, I know what she is," she said quickly, rolling her eyes. _"Obviously._ She, however, does not."

Professor Yangchen looked impatient. She sighed loudly. "Why are we here, Miss Sato?"

Korra gulped. "She doesn't know she's a - ?"

"No."

"But - "

"I know."

"She - "

"Korra, I know," Asami sighed. "I got into my car to move the last of my stuff to your house and I saw her in my parking lot just wandering around like she was lost."

"Everything just seems a bit off, lately," Yangchen said, almost bitterly. "I suppose it's because I haven't been getting much sleep. But no one has been paying a lick of attention to me. It's a bit rude, come to think of it. No one's ever treated me like that before."

"But she saw me and came over," Asami said. "Because, well, I could see her."

"You were always a very attentive pupil, Miss Sato."

"Thanks. Anyway, she doesn't remember anything. She was looking for her car so she could drive home."

"Couldn't find the bloody thing. I know I parked it in Lot C, by the Fire Ferrets Gym. I always park there."

Asami swallowed. "So I...kind of just put her in my car and told her I'd drive her home."

Korra didn't say anything for a very long while. She kept looking back and forth between the completely normal-looking physics professor who she'd seen just days ago practically decapitated and decomposing on the lecture hall floor, and Asami, who'd basically just adopted herself a clueless ghost grandma.

"I've got to get home," Professor Yangchen fretted. "I have to feed Pik and Pak."

"What?"

"Her cats," Asami explained. "She has two cats."

"Umm…" Korra swallowed. "I'm gonna go back inside to get Opal to cover the rest of my shift. Then...I think we should head to the house."

" _My_ house," Professor Yangchen said.

Asami sighed. "Professor, we want to take you to some of our friends. You know, so we can help you deal with...things. We actually have a...uh, _friend_ that's just like you."

"Do you stop him from taking care of his loved ones as well?"

"Professor - "

"No, Miss Sato, I think I've had enough of your games," she huffed, making a move to get out of the car. "Thank you for offering me a ride, but it's proven more an inconvenience than I thought it would."

Korra jumped in front of her although, with her being a ghost, she supposed it shouldn't have done much. Lucky for them, Yangchen had no idea. The old professor stopped and rolled her eyes.

"Young lady, get out of my way."

"Look, I'll join you and Asami to take you back home. Your home. Okay? I'll be right back. Give me two seconds."

Yangchen pursed her lips. "We can't wait too long. Pik and Pak are always fed at this time. I don't want them to worry about me."

Korra looked over at Asami, who was still blinking owlishly at her dead former professor.

"Asami?"

They locked eyes, and Korra hoped that she could get the message. They could not let Professor Yangchen wander around haunting random parking lots alone. This ghost could not leave until they got answers - a _lot_ of freaking answers.

* * *

"That's my house. Right there on the left, with the red door."

Asami slowed the car to a stop and Yangchen jumped out and scooted through the front door in a hurry. Literally, launched herself right through the car door and through the heavy wooden door of her house.

Korra made a face. "How the hell does she not know she's a ghost?"

"Dissociation?" Asami suggested.

"But she just flew through two doors! That woman is a scientist! She doesn't stop to think, like, 'Hey. Are my molecules _supposed_ to do this?'"

Asami bit back a laugh. "Stop it. I've read about dissociative states happening with traumatic events, and you can't get more traumatic than murder, right? My first semester I entertained the idea of being a psych major, and I remember reading about how traumatized people could just start eating their own arms and stuff."

"Huh. That's incredibly disgusting. I'd have switched to physics, too," Korra whipped out her phone. "Let's call Bolin so we can have a ghost's take on this - and _yes_ , he can talk on the phone."

Asami nodded sheepishly as Korra dialed Mako's cell. Bolin could technically use one, but it never seemed financially reasonable to get him a phone, despite the fact that even dead he'd probably get more use out of it than his brother.

"Mako, could you put Bo on - no, I'm fine, I left work early - it's a long story, I'll tell you later - not now, I'm kind of - can you just - I'm in the middle of something, Mako! Just get Bolin - oh, come _on!_ \- "

Korra groaned into the phone dramatically. Asami gently plucked it from her hands and put it on speaker.

"Mako? Hi, it's Asami."

"What are you guys up to?"

"I found the ghost of Professor Yangchen at school so I drove her to Korra's job. Yangchen is confused and can't answer our questions right now, so we took her home to feed her cats and hopefully get her mind together. Korra's trying to talk to Bolin to see if a similar kind of dissociation happened with him."

"Wha - but - _wha_ \- _huh?!_ "

"Bolin, please."

They heard a distinct change in static as Mako's phone was changed to speaker as well.

"Hey, Korra? Why is my brother sputtering like a broken robot?"

"Bo! Ugh, finally! Me and Asami are here at - "

"Oooooh, hi Asami!"

"Hey, Bolin."

"So you guys are just, like, hanging out?"

" _Bolin!"_ Korra shut everyone up re-summarized the situation. The boys were silent for a moment before Bo spoke up.

"It was three days before Mako came back to the house and found me. In those three days - yeah, I was like Yangchen. I thought I was alive and didn't understand why no one could see or talk to me. I tried to leave the house, but couldn't go out the door. I even tried climbing out the windows and banging on the walls. I was screaming, but no one heard me."

Korra felt her throat constrict. She always assumed it was like that for him, waking up scared and alone, invisible to the world until Mako returned. She had never wanted to hear him talk about it, though, in that solemn, hollow voice.

"But like, I literally watched them take my body away. I saw it, how my body looked after the vampires were done with it. I watched them mop my blood off the floors, even. But I still didn't get it. I think that's what Yangchen's going through. I couldn't connect the dots about what was happening, even though I could see it right in front of me."

Korra looked away, back at the the Professor's house. As she tried to tell herself that it was fine, that Bolin was okay now, something else occurred to her.

Bolin had always been trapped at the house. How come Yangchen could move around at will?

"What brought you back?" Asami was asking. "How did you manage to connect again?"

"I saw Mako. It all came rushing back to me, the second he found me."

That made some sense. Mako and Bolin's parents died when they were very young. They were all each other had for almost half their lives. Seeing someone they loved that much again should have been strong enough to pull Bolin out of whatever haze he'd been in.

"So, maybe that's all Professor Yangchen needs," Asami mused. "To see her cats, Pik and Pak."

"She's a crazy cat lady?"

"She is _not_ a _-_ "

" _AAAIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!"_

They jumped as a shrill scream burst from the second floor of Yangchen's house.

"What was that!?" Mako demanded. They had heard the shriek over the speakerphone.

"It was her," Asami said, jumping out of the car. Korra followed her.

"We'll call you guys right back." She hung up, despite his protests, and silenced the phone in case he tried to call them back. They needed to focus on Yangchen.

When they got to the front door, it was still locked. Of course - the ghost had never unlocked the door. She didn't need to.

Korra pounded on it with her fist. "Hey! Let us in!"

"Are you okay?" Asami called.

The response was frantic sobbing and a little bit of a wail.

"We have to get inside," Korra hissed.

"How?"

"Uhhhhh...who are you two yelling at?"

They swiveled around to find a man looking at them curiously from the street. He had a tiny dog on a leash with him.

"Yep," Korra said nervously as the crying from inside got louder. The man obviously couldn't hear the ghost's sobbing, but they could and it was profoundly distracting.

"You know the lady that lives in that house is dead, right? That professor that was mauled by wolves or whatever? That's her house."

"Oh, yes, we know." Asami said quickly. "We're just here to...feed her cats. Make sure they're okay and stuff."

"You were shouting at her cats?"

"They're smart cats," Korra said impatiently. This guy needed to _go_.

"Well, you don't need to. Her family came two days ago and took the them away someplace. Cats are fine."

Korra and Asami shared a look.

"Oh. Then...I guess we'll go."

He nodded. "Okay, then."

Nobody moved for a few seconds, and it became obvious that this guy was nosy as hell and would not leave until they did. So they begrudgingly made their way back to the car, where the tiny dog nipped at Korra's ankles and began to bark.

"Sorry, he's a little misbehaved. Never got him fixed," the guy said sheepishly. "Although he normally only acts like this when he sees other female doggies. Don't know what's gotten into him. Bruno, stop that!"

Bruno did not, and Korra tried not to be extremely humiliated by it. Asami had the decency not to say anything about it either, at least. As the guy left with his gross, yappy dog, she made a show of waiting for the car to warm up.

"I hate the suburbs," Asami said.

"Me too."

"So her cats are gone. I guess that explains why the Professor is so upset."

"Does it?" Korra listened as the loud sobs continued. "This seems a little much over a pair of cats."

"She really liked her cats." Asami squinted through her windshield. "Okay, I think Mr. Asshole-Who-Doesn't-Fix-His-Pets is gone. How do we get in the house? We need to tell Yangchen that Pik and Pak are fine."

Korra shrugged. "Through one of the windows? In the back, though. I don't want to deal with people on the street being dumb and nosy."

They tried to casually and unsuspiciously cross considerable Professor Yangchen's yard, which smelled faintly of cat urine, and make their way around to the back of the house. There were two first floor windows, but they appeared to be locked and Korra wasn't interested in breaking any of them. The second floor, though, had one small window that looked like it was open just a crack. That was all she needed.

"I think I can climb up to that window."

"Climb on what? That's vinyl siding."

The yard was devoid of anything that could be remotely useful for breaking into the house. Professor Yangchen was apparently a gardener, and her small yard was accented with an actually quite pretty flower bed, as well as some kind of vegetable patch and stone walkway. There was an old shed, but it's rickety doors hung open and all they could see inside was a wheelbarrow that was too short to reach the window, and a couple of gardening tools.

"I can boost you up," Asami offered.

"No, I'll boost you up."

"You're lighter than me."

"I am not! I'm shorter, but I'm super dense!"

She snorted. "So am I!"

Korra looked at her skeptically. Asami wasn't exactly one of those weak-looking elvish, waify college girls, but she also didn't look as strong as a werewolf who could bench press over twice her body weight without breaking a sweat.

"Okay, now I'm offended," Asami said, squatting down and holding out her hands. "Come here. I'm boosting you up, you werewolf elitist."

"Um, make sure to put your weight through your legs and watch your back - "

"Come. Here."

She defiantly grabbed Korra's foot and heaved her upwards so fast she nearly toppled over.

"Holy shit - !"

"Grab the window!"

"Okay, okay, jeez!" Korra curled her fingers around the windowsill. "You're stronger than you look!"

"And you're heavier than you look!"

Korra pulled herself up and looked down as Asami staggered backwards, rubbing her quads. "I mean, I told you so. But good, you didn't use your back. Do you lift?"

"Maybe. Owww. Just go through the window, would you? And don't forget to let me in down here - _ahhh!_ "

Asami jumped as Professor Yangchen just suddenly appeared in the yard in front of her. Her yelp startled Korra, and one of her hands lost their grip.

"Korra!" she cried.

"I'm fine! Although, what the fuck?"

Yangchen glared. "Language. Why are you dangling off the side of my house, young lady?"

"Kind of a long story - "

"Oh, never mind that," the Professor began to tear up again. "My cats are gone. They're _gone._ "

"Listen," Asami said calmly, despite the fact that she was trying to comfort a murdered ghost as Korra still hung by one arm from a second floor window. "I think your daughter might have taken your cats. We just need to swing by your daughter's house and - "

"No!" Yangchen sniffed. "We don't have to go there."

"But she probably - "

"Min won't have taken in Pik and Pak. She's pregnant and a bit of a worry wart. She read all this propaganda about how cats spread toxoplasmosis that can harm her baby and won't have anything to do with the cats. Can you imagine? They're her siblings and she won't come near them until after the baby is born."

"I've heard about toxoplasmosis too," Korra said unhelpfully.

"Well, at the very least, Min can tell us where she had the cats sent," Asami reasoned. "Tell us where she lives, and we'll take you there. It actually might be good for you to, uh, to see your daughter."

Korra hoped that maybe the old woman would get over her cats for long enough to see her daughter, and maybe that would pull her together like Mako's appearance had done for Bolin.

"Min lives not too far down the road," Yangchen sniffed. She looked uncomfortable. "She and her husband moved there so I could be nearby to help with the baby."

Very softly, she felt her heart break.

"We'll take you there," Korra said.

"Okay."

"But first, Asami, can you help me down?"

" _Oh!"_

* * *

It only took them five minutes to drive to Min's house, since there was no traffic or else anything remarkable in the bland Republic City suburb. Somehow, it seemed the perfect place to be an old cat lady and a young couple expecting a child. There was absolutely nothing concerning about the place. That made it even stranger for Yangchen to be so insistent on staying in the car.

She squared her jaw indignantly. "I don't want to speak with her."

"Did you guys have a fight or something?" Korra asked, perhaps less than tactfully. Yangchen looked affronted.

"Of course not! She's my daughter, and she's having my grandchild!"

"So what's the problem? You want to find out where your cats are, don't you?"

When she didn't budge, Asami eyed her old professor carefully. "We'll go in, then. Korra and I. Promise you'll stay right here and wait for us?"

Yangchen just scowled. "Fine."

"What's going on?" Korra protested as she allowed Asami to pull her towards the house. "She wants to find her stupid cats so bad, why doesn't she want to go inside?"

"I think she just figured it out."

"Figured what out?"

"That she's dead."

Korra stopped. "Oh..."

"I think something at her house, maybe a picture of her kids or her cats or something, brought her back. Bolin said seeing his brother did it for him… Well, something did it for her. That's why she was carrying on like that back there."

"Right. But that doesn't explain why she doesn't want to come with us."

"Her daughter is expecting _and_ grieving, Korra. If I were her, I couldn't bear seeing that, either."

That had never occurred to her and she felt very foolish. If the woman cared so much for her pets, of course she loved her daughter too much to handle seeing her in pain. Korra averted her gaze to the perfectly manicured grass.

"Damn it. I don't know if we're close enough yet, so you're gonna have to turn around because I don't want you to see my cry all over this woman's lawn."

Asami actually smirked. "Once you've accidentally grabbed a girl's butt as she falls from a second story window, I think you're considered pretty close."

That threw Korra off-balance a little bit as she watched her make her way to the door and ring the doorbell. She'd _thought_ she'd felt an accidental butt contact back there.

When she looked back, Professor Yangchen was slouched down in the car, determined not to look at the house.

"Hello," Asami was saying as a heavily pregnant woman who did look astonishingly like the Professor answered the door. "My name is Asami. I was a student of your mother's."

Min was maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, but the dark bags and puffy redness around her eyes made her look much older. She had very obviously been crying not long before answering them. Her nose was pink, the result of a hurried nose-wipe in an attempt to look presentable.

"Hello," she said, choking up. Korra couldn't take it. She had no idea how Asami was able to look woman in the face.

"I'm very, deeply sorry for your loss," Asami managed. "She was a treasured professor at the university. She meant a lot to me."

Min swallowed, and then nodded.

"Thank you," she paused. "I'm sorry, did you say your name was Asami? Asami Sato?"

"Yes. Has she mentioned me?"

"Absolutely. You were her favorite student. She would go on and on about your engineering designs. Said you'd be greater than your father one day."

"That's...really flattering."

"Would you and your friend like to come in?" she asked.

"That's kind, but we don't want to trouble you," Asami said. "We actually wanted to ask you something. Your mother mentioned she had two cats."

"Pik and Pak?" Min nodded. "Yes, we made sure to rescue them. It's a shame - I know mom loved those cats, but I can't have them in the house while I'm expecting, and I don't know if I can take care of them _and_ a new baby."

"I totally get it. Where are they now?"

"Are you interested in adopting?" she brightened slightly. "That would be perfect! We dropped them off at the local animal shelter. We've been crossing our fingers that they'd be adopted soon."

"Uhhh…"

"The one on Roku Street. It'd be wonderful if they could be adopted together, that was one of my worries. Pik and Pak are inseparable. They could really use a nice couple like you two - "

"We're not a couple!" Korra said quickly. "Uh, hi. I'm Korra. Just Asami's future roommate."

"...okay."

"You said Roku Street?" Asami continued, unphased. "I know where that is."

"That's awesome. Thank you," Min gushed. She wiped away a tear. "That's really great."

"Honey?" A tall, gangly-looking man appeared behind her. "Everything okay?"

Min smiled at him. "Lou, this is Asami Sato, one of mom's students. She's gonna adopt Pik and Pak!"

"Uhhh…" Asami repeated.

"That's wonderful! That really makes us happy." Now Lou was the one to start with the waterworks. He sniffled and put a hand on his wife's shoulder reassuringly. "Her mother would love that. This is the best news we've had in...it feels like forever."

"It does," Min agreed, putting her hand on his and squeezing it. Both their other hands went around her swollen belly.

 _Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no._

Korra coughed loudly, as if that would stop the tears from spring into her own eyes.

"Okay! Awesome! It was nice to meet you guys!"

Asami was already lost. Her cheeks were already wet. "It really was a pleasure. Please, if we can do anything to help you. Literally anything."

"You've done a lot already," Lou assured her. "Thank you."

They practically ran back to the car as the young couple went back inside. Asami tumbled into the driver seat and grabbed a wad of tissues from the glove compartment.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God that was torture," she whimpered.

Korra tried to swallow that heavy lump in her throat. "Damn it, I don't even know them and my heart is in fucking _pieces_."

"Young lady, you really need a language adjustment."

They'd almost forgotten that the ghost of Professor Yangchen was sitting right there in their back seat.

"Professor, your daughter and son-in-law are the sweetest," Asami said.

"I know. Are they okay? Did Min's face look too thin?"

"No. She looked healthy. Just...sad."

Yangchen was still staring stonily forward. The unspoken acknowledgement - that she knew she was dead, that she knew she was a ghost - hung heavily between them.

"The last time I saw her was the day before. I told her I'd come over after work to help decorate the nursery. Min was excited. She always had a fire in her eyes whenever she focused on something, and I'd never seen her more focused than she has been preparing for this baby. She was in the military, you know. That's how she met her husband. Everything about her is systematic. Step-by-step, by the book."

They let her continue without interrupting.

"It's stressful, having a baby, but they'll do wonderfully. Her and Lou. He's a dear thing. I'm lucky. I know he'll take good care of her and their family, even if I'm not able to. That's why I didn't want to see them - I want to remember them like that. Her smiling, him taking care of her, both of them so hopeful. That's the last thing I need to remember about them. That they'll be fine without me."

"They are gonna be fine," Asami agreed. "Definitely."

"It's just...Pik and Pak. I don't know what's going to happen to them."

Before she knew what she saying, Korra spoke up.

"We'll adopt them."

Asami abruptly turned to her.

"What? Really!?"

"We'll adopt the cats," Korra said firmly. "Both of them. And you'll come stay with us at the house. You can still be with them. We actually have a friend thats a - just like you. It's working out for us. We've made a home. You and Pik and Pak are welcome to join us."

For the first time, Yangchen looked at them. Really, truly, looked at them.

"Thank you. But I won't be joining you, I don't think."

"Why not?" Asami asked, alarmed.

"Because of that."

Yangchen pointed at something outside. They followed her gaze and gasped.

Standing on its own, right in the middle of the street, was a door. It wasn't supported by any walls, and there was nothing in front of or behind it. But it was a heavy-looking wooden door, just suddenly _there_. The knob shiny and well-oiled, the wooden smooth and finished.

"That's...that's weird, right?" Asami whispered at Korra.

"Yes, Asami, it's fucking weird for a door to appear out of thin air. Even for me."

"Just checking."

"I don't know what it is, but I think that's where I'm going," Yangchen said softly, coming out of the car. This time, she actually opened it and stepped out. Asami and Korra followed her until they were standing right in front of it.

Korra could feel it then. There was no actual temperature change, but she could only describe the feeling as a warmth. A tingling electricity on her skin. There was a faint glow emanating from around the frame of the door. It was inviting, almost welcoming. The mysterious door felt...good, somehow.

"Do you feel that?" Asami asked

"Yeah."

"What is that?"

"I have no idea."

"That's because it's not for you," Yangchen said serenely, not an ounce of concern in her voice. "It's not your door. You feel it, but not like I am. I know this...this is _my_ door."

"How do you know?" Asami demanded, sounding nervous. She was reaching out, as if to hold the Professor back

"I just know."

"Where did it even come from, though?" Korra demanded. Whatever calming effect the door was having on her was slowly being replaced by fear.

"I'm not sure. But it appeared the exact second you said you'd adopt Pik and Pak," Yangchen said quietly. "I felt better, and then suddenly, there it was. My way out."

"Out of what?!" Asami was almost sounding panicked at that point. Korra took her hand and squeezed it.

"Out of this place, I think." Yangchen noted her tone as well and tried to smile at her. "A doorway to whatever comes after this."

"You want to go through it!?" Asami cried incredulously. "But - but you don't know what's behind it! You don't _know!_ "

The Professor ran her fingertips along the polished wood.

"When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen…"

Asami took a deep breath. "Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly."

"Excellent. You were always my best student."

"But you can't just…"

But she could. The feeling that emanated from the door was powerful. To Yangchen, possibly overwhelming. It was frightening for sure, a mysterious portal to somewhere just appearing out of thing air, but the door seemed to know that. It was completely insane, but the door seemed to realize it was scary, and whatever was behind it was trying to make them feel better. The fucking door was _comforting_ them. And out of all the things Korra had seen already, she supposed this was just another thing she was going to have to accept as reality.

She squeezed her hand. "Asami. This feels right. This feels like it's supposed to happen."

Yangchen sighed. And then, all of a sudden, she spoke firmly. Almost angrily.

"It was a man. At least, I thought he was a man at first. I was afraid of him the moment I lay eyes on him. He wore a mask, you see. A white mask with a red circle on the forehead. He also had a hood on his sweatshirt, so I couldn't see anything. Didn't say a word. But then he took off the mask."

Her breath hitched as they gaped at her silently.

"I never forget a face, but I wish I didn't remember this one. His eyes were black, pitch black. There was nothing there, no emotion. He looked Southern Water Tribe, dark hair, maybe forty years old. I asked him who he was and what he wanted. He was surprisingly well-spoken. He said his name was Amon. And he said he wanted... _everything._ "

"Amon?" Korra repeated.

"He said he wanted everything, and that he was going to take it. Then...well, you said you saw what happened to me afterwards."

"I'm so sorry," Asami whispered.

"It's...all right," Professor Yangchen said, as if she were only realizing it in that moment. "For me, at least. I'll be all right. But everyone else…I have no choice but to leave that to you."

She opened the door and they had to shield their eyes from the brilliant white light that seemed to exploded before them. They could barely see as Yangchen stepped into the door, into the beyond that neither of them were yet meant to understand.

"Wait! Professor!" Korra called abruptly. "Please, one last thing! How were you not trapped on campus? You died there, but were able to travel around to the coffee shop and other houses and - our friend, Bolin. He's like you, but he can't do that. He's trapped in one place. How did you leave the lecture hall?"

At first, she thought it was too late. That Yangchen had already moved on. But then...

"Sweetheart, I just really, _really_ wanted to."

Her voice faded, and without another word the door slammed shut and vanished without so much as a puff of smoke.


End file.
